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Badger Trust wants cull proposals reconsidered

FARMERS GUARDIAN
4 January 2011 | By Barry Alston

THE Badger Trust has formally stated its total opposition to culling badgers to control bovine TB and wants two of the UK Governments to reconsider their proposed policies.

The calls to both the Coalition Government in Westminster and the Welsh Assembly Government come ahead of expected decisions in respect of England or Wales during the early part of the New Year following public consultations.

But the Badger Trust response to both consultations is that badger culling is ‘unjustified in the light of available scientific evidence’.

It says the proposals of either Government will not in practice deliver the estimated benefits and considerably increase the risk of spreading bovine tuberculosis from one farm to another.

The only effective natural barriers to the movement of badgers were the sea or large estuaries.

In Wales, the trust says landowners and farmers could also be criminalized for refusing to allow contractors on to their land to kill badgers and would be a disproportionate interference with their human rights.

Policies set out in the consultation papers had also underestimated the risks of making outbreaks worse and overestimated the benefits of culling.

Instead of culling the trust urges a policy based on the licensed vaccine now available for badgers.

It also presses for urgent negotiations with the EU to allow vaccination of cattle alongside the DIVA test to discriminate between healthy, vaccinated cattle and infected cattle.

The trust says it addresses in detail the proposals outlined in both consultation documents ─ which, it says, ‘contain many erroneous assumptions’ ─ in its formal response documents available at http://www.badgertrust.org.uk

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