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PRESS RELEASE: True Welsh TB figures revealed

BADGER TRUST
27 April 2011

Campaigners against badger culling in Wales have uncovered a serious omission in a speech by the Rural Affairs Minister in the Welsh Assembly. Mrs Elin Jones said the number of herds affected in the area covered by the culling order had increased by 44 percent but failed to add that the number of individual cattle from those herds slaughtered was halved from 1725 in 2008 to 850 in 2010. This followed the imposition of stringent cattle measures and (of course) was achieved without any badgers being culled. Pembrokeshire Against the Cull obtained these unpublished figures under the Freedom of Information Act.

The Minister told the Senedd in March only that there were 79 new TB breakdowns last year compared with 55 in 2009. She went on to mention total compensation paid, without explaining that compensation is for animals, not herds. The compensation bill for the Intensive Action Area (IAA) could, on this basis, have been reduced by up to half over the period.

The new low figure for cattle slaughtered is well on to the way to the level (749) it was in 2006 -- but still with no badgers killed.

The Badger Trust, which works with Pembrokeshire Against the Cull, says this mismatch between one set of figures and another follows an earlier major omission. The Minister failed to include details of the responses to her official consultation when she announced her decision to destroy badgers in the IAA. The consultation showed that up to four times as many of the 13,000 responses [1] were against killing wildlife for the control of bovine tuberculosis as were not. Despite this the Minister said [2]: “After full consideration of the evidence presented to me, including consideration of the responses to the recent Consultation on Badger Control in the Intensive Action Area, I have reached the decision to proceed with legislation which would enable a government-led cull of badgers in the Intensive Action Area”.

Jack Reedy
THE BADGER TRUST 

 

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