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Farmer support needed to secure badger cull decision-Minister

FARMERS GUARDIAN
5 October 2010 | By Alistair Driver

FARMERS must make their voices heard if they want the Government to go ahead with a badger cull in England, Farming Minister Jim Paice has warned.

Despite previous statements that the coalition Government is committed to implementing a cull in England, Mr Paice insisted that the final decision had not yet been made.

“We have gone out to consultation. There is no final decision. The consultation will run until early December, after which we will have to consider the responses and decide how we go forward,” he told an NFU fringe event at the Conservative Party Conference.

Speaking on the same panel, NFU president Peter Kendall sought to reinforce the point.“Please, please will all the farmers in the room respond to the consultation and go home and tell your neighbours to respond to the consultation. I am very keen that we get the message across,” he said.

Organisations opposed to the cull, such as the RSPCA and the Badger Trust are mobilising their supporters to respond to the consultation in large numbers. In a previous consultation on badger culling, 95 per cent of respondents stated their opposition to a cull.

The comments by Mr Kendall and Mr Paice reflect concerns that complacency within the farming industry and a belief that the cull is a ‘done deal’ could undermine the chances of it going ahead. The policy will ultimately need approval across Government and an overwhelmingly negative response to the consultation due to a lack of farmer support will make it harder to justify.

Mr Paice also stressed during the meeting that Defra Ministers were not suggesting that badger culling was the ‘sole solution’ to tackling bovine TB.

“We believe it is just one part of a range of measures we are going to use to tackle this disease. It is going to take at least 20 years of concerted efforts involving every possible mechanism if we are going to eliminate bTB in this country,” he said.

He said farmers and landowners inside the cull areas who did not want badgers to be culled on their land and those located outside the cull areas who wanted the disease controlled in wildlife would be encouraged to vaccinate badgers.  He said he was also planning to introduce new cattle measures early next year that ‘not every farmer will like’. There would be ‘tougher’ movement and testing conditions imposed in some cases but also a ‘relaxation’ of the rules where this was justified on the balance of risk.

To view the consultation see: http://www.defra.gov.uk/corporate/consult/tb-control-measures/

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