We need vaccination not killing
I SALUTE the way Queen guitarist Brian May led a rally on Bristol's College Green calling for a planned badger cull to be stopped in Gloucestershire and Somerset.
Wildlife groups say up to 130,000 badgers could be killed in an attempt to help eradicate bovine tuberculosis, which last year led to the slaughter of more than 26,000 cattle at a cost of £91 million to the economy.
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Queen guitarist Brian May at the Stop the Cull rally on College Green
Of all our wildlife, it seems that badgers attract more public attention than any other. They have been horribly persecuted by us for centuries. They are at the sharp end of a debate about bovine tuberculosis and yet they are regarded with a great deal of affection by so many people.
The incredibly cruel sport of badger-baiting, in which badgers are restrained and in some cases have parts of their jaw removed whilst dogs are set upon them, is still being practiced in some parts of the country in the 21st century, despite being made illegal in 1835.
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A large number of badgers have been culled in government trials to establish whether these animals are responsible for spreading TB amongst cattle.
These creatures are charismatic. They are a part of our world and, hopefully, they are here to stay.
Let's all hope Queen guitarist Brian May can get his message across loud and clear. All we need to save our loveable badger is a vaccination, not cold-blooded killing.
D F Courtney
Weston-super-Mare
Comments
by dodge102
Wednesday, September 26 2012, 3:27PM
“Badger cull in the interests of no one.
Once again a British government has chosen to seek the best possible scientific advice and then ignore it! The licensed killing of badgers in parts of Gloucestershire and Somerset could achieve a number of things. It could further advertise the unwelcome existence of bovine tuberculosis in British dairy herds. It could polarise opinion in the countryside and unite political opposition everywhere else. It could cost the farmers involved more than they could gain. It will almost certainly provoke active protest and put even more pressure on already hard-pressed police forces.
What it will almost certainly not do is limit bovine tuberculosis, even in the target zones of Gloucestershire and Somerset. It might be helpful to list those things that are certain. Human tuberculosis is a dangerous disease. Bovine tuberculosis is a real problem for dairy farmers – who in any case have been paid too little for their milk and who have been going out of business for decades – and the disease lives on in the wild badger population. But by 1996, a policy of identification and slaughter had reduced the incidence of bovine TB in dairy herds in England and Wales to less than half a per cent, and the risk of direct transmission to humans has – with the pasteurisation of milk – long ago become negligible. The last and most systematic examination of the link between badgers and bovine TB found that, indeed, there was transmission, and proposed a series of systematic, randomised controlled trials over a sustained period to see whether culling could provide an answer. In 2003, the government, farmers, public health officers and wildlife campaigners got the answer: shooting and gassing did not eliminate, and could possibly spread, the disease. That may be because badgers disturbed in one area could migrate, taking the infection with them. The answer, delivered by Lord Krebs and the distinguished statisticians and zoologists who examined the results, could hardly be clearer: killing will not solve the problem. Lord Krebs's scientific credentials are not in doubt. He was trusted by successive British governments to head the Natural Environment Research Council, and to chair the Food Standards Agency. And he has just described the latest plan as a "crazy scheme".
http://tinyurl.com/bvjp9rv”