OneKind has submitted its response to a DEFRA consultation aimed at addressing the spread of bovine tuberculosis in the dairy cattle herd in England, by means of a badger control policy.
Many animals other than cattle can catch or transmit TB but, as everyone knows, the unwelcome spotlight invariably falls upon the badger.
Badgers getting the blame
Farmers blame badgers for the spread of TB and the UK government’s proposed solution to this problem is to issue licences to farmers and landowners, allowing them to shoot the animals.
OneKind and many other animal welfare groups have serious concerns about this simplistic approach.
DEFRA appears to be ignoring the advice of independent scientific experts, whose findings and conclusions have been published in top quality peer-reviewed journals and are widely accepted within the scientific community.
The report of the Independent Scientific Group on Cattle TB, which carried out a major, randomised trial of badger culling, considered that issuing licences to cull would likely make the problem of cattle TB worse, rather than better.
Culling badgers under licence not only could fail to achieve a beneficial effect, but could actually increase the incidence of cattle TB and increase the geographical spread of the disease.
Nonetheless the DEFRA proposal seems to assume that culling under licence by farmers and landowners can be carried out in such a way that the overall impact on cattle TB will be positive.
But even if this were possible (and the scientific evidence seems to indicate otherwise), it could only be achieved by largely eliminating badgers from vast swathes of the British countryside.
Public opinion favours the badgers
In our view, the virtual elimination of badgers over large areas of countryside would be completely unacceptable. And it’s not just OneKind: the strength of public feeling on this issue was demonstrated by the overwhelming majority (over 95%) of responses to DEFRA’s 2006 consultation, expressing opposition to a badger cull.
If the scientific basis for DEFRA’s preferred option is open to question, it must also be challenged on animal welfare grounds.
Under the current proposals, shooting of free-ranging badgers is likely to be the most common method used (because it is the cheapest option).
Shooting badgers – an inhumane solution
But shooting a badger requires specialist knowledge of its anatomy and the ability to judge, from its posture, whether a clean kill can be achieved.
Given that shooting is likely to take place mostly at night and may be carried out by farmers with no prior experience of shooting badgers, we are concerned that many animals may be wounded and suffer considerably as a result.
Finally, we ask – not for the first time – why government wildlife management policies always seem to start from the basis that the best solution to any problem with wild animals is to kill them in large numbers.
Culling may be cheap, but it is a crude weapon. It’s time governments began to see non-lethal approaches as their first and preferred options, rather than as slightly way-out alternatives promoted by impractical idealists.
OneKind’s consultation response
Read our response to the DEFRA consultation on badger control for England.