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PRESS RELEASE: CYNICAL EMOTIONAL BLACKMAIL

For Immediate Release:
From Badger Trust 
Wednesday 8th December 2010

To: Directors, Press, MPs, Lords, Welsh AMs, Affiliated Badger Groups, Additional Contacts, Non Affiliated Groups, Other Organisations, Supporters with Email

Badger Trust challenges exploitation of farmer’s plight.

The Badger Trust exposes last week’s attempt [1] by the Farmers’ Union of Wales (FUW) to trade on sympathy for farms affected by bovine TB (bTB) as cynical emotional blackmail. The farming press has reported, in harrowing language, how a Welsh farmer had to watch 23 cattle shot on the farm because of cattle TB.

The FUW was trying to exploit the details of this on-farm culling while at the same time linking it, without any supporting justification, to badgers. Its statement highlights the presence of badger setts surrounding the farm in a context that implies badgers were implicated in the loss of the cattle, but the FUW offers no proof there were any badgers present. It also fails to acknowledge the complexity of the disease, its transmission between animals, and the risk of disturbing badgers’ habitat

A further serious omission from this attempt at news manipulation is the essential comparison between the loss of cattle because of bTB and the huge number culled annually through other diseases – estimated as 300,000 in 2008 [2] against 36,322 because of bTB deaths in 2009 [3]. Compared to the number of cattle lost to bTB, around seven times as many were slaughtered that year because of infertility and five times as many were culled because of mastitis.

The Welsh Assembly Government’s public consultation on its resurrected proposal to kill thousands of badgers in Pembrokeshire draws to its close next week (December 17). Brian Walters, the FUW’s bTB spokesman, attempts to belittle the genuine and informed concern of people who will respond negatively: “They are, however, completely unaffected by this terrible disease and have been lulled by wildlife groups into believing culling does not work and is futile”, he says. This fails to recognize the findings of scientists of international standing who have called the effectiveness of culling into question. Also, the Court of Appeal earlier this year established the illegality of killing badgers for no substantial reduction in bTB.

The FUW statement reports the distress and panic of cattle in the pen where others were being shot, yet newborn bull calves are shot out of hand when they have no economic value. The Trust says the real reason for the clamor is that bTB, as opposed to other diseases, prevents among other things, the farm from profiting from trade in live cattle while the risk of infection persists.

Badger Trust chairman David Williams said: “The FUW’s use of such phrases as distressed owners, traumatic revelations, harrowing experiences and calves being shot will convince no one that the slaughter of thousands of badgers is justified as a way of controlling the spread of the disease. It has even been shown to be likely to make the epidemic worse in the long term.

“People who have taken the considerable trouble to inform themselves of the scientific background have not been lulled by anyone, and will not be impressed by the kind of emotional blackmail used by Mr Walters”, Mr Williams said.

Jack Reedy

NOTES

[1] http://www.fuw.org.uk/read-press-release/items/620.html

[2] Total number of milking dairy cows of more than two years estimated to have been culled prematurely in GB in 2008, was 301,096 based on data from The Kite Health and Culling Monitor applied to the whole UK milking herd for diseases other than bTB.

http://www.kiteconsulting.com/

[3] Latest available annual figures.

 

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