Perhaps some of us have got used to the idea of the badger cull ? Just politics, and perhaps something that’s necessary to solve a farming problem ?
But the truth is this is the worst atrocity against British wildlife in history. It’s persecution on an almost unimaginable scale. 33,000 animals killed ? Imagine driving down a road for 18 miles. The bodies of these creatures laid end to end would stretch all the way along – 18 miles of the dead, completely innocent families of our native badgers. In terms of animal cruelty, the Badger Cull is the national disgrace of our times. The fact that it has achieved NOTHING towards lessening the incidence of TB in cattle, and NOTHING to alleviate the suffering of cattle farmers, makes this a tragic and unforgivable abuse.
Nobody can cite any of the reports to date to support the claim that the badger cull is working to combat bovine TB in cattle. Even the controversial Bunton et al paper, which has been falsely used to justify the cull, says “it would be unwise to draw conclusions” from the existing data, and the recent Godfray Report to Michael Gove says “it is wrong, we believe, to overemphasise the role of wildlife” in the spread of Bovine TB.
New work has established that the routes of re-infection reside in the herd, in undetected shedding cows. The project we (Save-Me) have now undertaken in The Gower Peninsula in cooperation with the Welsh farmers and the Welsh Government, is modelled on Dick Sibley’s successful strategy at Gatcombe. It will verify once and for all that Bovine TB can be eliminated from cattle herds without killing a single wild animal.
The evidence is already overwhelming; This is a fatally flawed policy: ineffective, unjustifiable, and ultimately doomed.
For sound economic, scientific and moral reasons, we call on Michael Gove to end this disgrace now.
Brian May
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All through today I felt angry and devastated that we still haven’t managed to stop the hopeless bloody mess that is the badger cull. I know we will win in the end, because I now know the truth. But meanwhile the witch-hunt blunders on, and the terrible injustice and suffering continues. Badgers and cows continue to be infected.
Infected cows are destroyed, while badgers, whether infected or not (nobody bothers to find out) are indiscriminately blasted to death. It ‘s a travesty.
And the farmers? They struggle with the same stress and despair, year after year, because the present government enforced strategy IS NOT WORKING. And still it goes on.
But we will never give up. Some day soon the badger cull will be viewed as just as ineffective and insane as burning witches at the stake.
I hope I’m around to see that day.
Bri
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