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BADGER TRUST PRESS RELEASE: Welsh Assembly Government Error in Leaflet

19 December 2010
The Welsh Assembly Government’s (WAG) should repeat its resurrected public consultation about its proposal to kill badgers. The Badger Trust says a serious mistake in 25,000 official leaflets made the consultation – its second attempt – invalid.

A Welsh Assembly Government statement said last month [1] that an “error occurred in the editing” of a sentence in the leaflet (also referred to as a letter) sent to homes in the key Intensive Action Area in Pembrokeshire where WAG proposes to kill several thousand badgers in an attempt to control cattle tuberculosis.

The statement said: “The sentence in question reads, ‘Previous trials have shown that culling badgers can reduce TB in cattle, by as much as 50% in six months’. This should have read ‘Previous trials have shown that culling badgers can reduce TB in cattle. Culling can start to show a benefit in six months’.”

David Williams, chairman of the Badger Trust, said: “This error is unforgivable for a national government supposedly offering reliable guidance to constituents responding to its consultation. The Badger Trust’s own response [2] exposes many other misinterpretations of science in the WAG consultation document.

"WAG has already had to climb down once and this is its second attempt at a consultation following the Badger Trust’s successful Appeal Court action during the summer to stop its killing plans. Now we demand at least a third attempt to conduct a fairer consultation, or at best the complete scrapping of its misguided culling policies which could well make the situation worse”.

The Badger Trust has also submitted a carefully-argued response to the Coalition Government’s consultation document about its similar plans for England where do-it-yourself shooting of badgers by farmers is suggested. Scotland enjoys TB-free status and Northern Ireland has said it had no plans to kill badgers. The intention in Ireland is to replace culling with badger vaccination.

NOTES

[1] WELSH GOVERNMENT CORRECTIONS TO THE BOVINE TB LEAFLET
http://wales.gov.uk/publications/accessinfo/drnewhomepage/environmentdrs2/2010/bovinetbleaflet/?lang=en

[2] BADGER TRUST RESPONSES TO WELSH CULL CONSULTATION
 http://www.badgertrust.org.uk/_Attachments/Resources/459_S4.pdf

Badger Trust is the only charity solely dedicated to the conservation of badgers throughout the UK.
PO Box 708, EAST GRINSTEAD, RH19 2WN
Tel: 08458 287878 Fax: 02380 233896
E-mail press@badgertrust.org.uk
http://www.badgertrust.org.uk

 

 

 

 

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