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Badger Trust rubbishes latest cull demand

FARMERS GUARDIAN
9 August 2010 | By Barry Alston

ANY fresh attempts to instigate a badger cull in West Wales would be a ‘pointless’ exercise, according to the Badger Trust.

It is claiming that the incidence ofbovine TBis falling with only half as many cattle being slaughtered in Dyfed because of bovine TB in the first four months of this year than in the same period last year ─ with no badgers being killed.

The number of herds infected in Dyfed is also said to have fallen by a healthy 14 per cent between the same periods.

“This is the county where up to 1,500 badgers were under threat of extermination until the Appeal Court quashed the plan in June,” says the trust.

“Although theDefrafigures are provisional and subject to revision the reductions are far from marginal and in line with longer-term statistics showing a consistent downward trend of about 7 per cent over the last two and a half years both in Wales and Great Britain as a whole,” it adds.

“The stringent controls in Wales on the movement and sale of live cattle are designed to achieve results such as these and should also be implemented across England and without the wasteful distraction of killing badgers.

“Elsewhere, Scotland has now been given TB-free status by the EU and Northern Ireland has announced it has no plans to kill badgers,” says the trust.

It also takes theFarmers Union of Walesto task over claims that culling could be effective.

Instead, says the trust, the union should be wholeheartedly encouraging its members to back cattle-based measures in the light of the improving figures.

“The FUW has asserted in a statement it did not see fit to have independently validated an assumed drop in bTB of 30 per cent if badgers were killed for over five years in North Pembrokeshire and 32 per cent for a further two and a half years.

“But even theWelsh Assembly Government has calculated only a supposed 9 per cent reduction in bTB,” claims the trust.

The Court of Appeal had found that a 9 per cent reduction would not be sufficiently “substantial” under the Animal Health Act to justify killing wildlife.

Neither did the court establish a threshold for an expected “substantial reduction” in disease as would be required under the Animal Health Act.

“In any case, the diminishing level of bTB over the last two and a half years with no badgers killed confirms the pointlessness of culling,” says the trust.

 

 

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