If anyone has any concerns about the political motivations behind this cruel and pointless badger cull one only has to look that the people who are pushing the agenda.
The NFU are desperate to shift the blame onto the badgers to avoid the necessary bio-security and cattle movement measures that will be required to properly control the spread of bovine TB, both in cattle and the wildlife at large.
Since the first bovine TB infected badger was found in 1971 it is now considered that with the massive industrialisation of the farming industry has resulted in the spread bovine TB into the wildlife and farmers are now conducting a desperate damage limitation exercise by pointing the finger of blame at the badger. Bovine TB can affect not only badgers but also pigs, rabbits, deer, foxes, ferrets, mink, rats, cats and dogs; so should we start and cull all these species also?
For the NFU gone is the notion that the polluter should pay for the clean-up costs for the contamination they are responsible for. The farmers do not want to contribute a penny for the bovine TB that has seeped from their farms into the countryside and associated wildlife left alive around the farm. Instead they seek to destroy the wildlife using our money in a vain attempt to shift the blame.
People need to consider very carefully if they want to support an industry that will eventually wipe out our native wildlife using our money and giving us no say whatsoever in the process, trotting out the old adage that “we do not understand the countryside and its ways”. Perhaps if they were financial pressures on the farming industry then the dictatorship of the policy currently emerging from the NFU would be challenged.
With this debate regarding the badger cull we should consider it as a nuclear leak at say Hinckley Point power station, but unlike the nuclear power company, which would be forced to take responsibility for the contamination we the taxpayer are being forced to pick up the bill for the spread of bovine TB into our wildlife and then pay to have our wildlife killed as a result of the farmers messy industry and reluctance to spend money on much needed farm improvements and unregulated cattle movements.
The Countryside Alliance’s hand in this bloody badger cull is beginning to emerge with Guy Robinson who was previously the head of political research at the Countryside Alliance, being appointed to support the Environment Secretary Owen Paterson, who is a keen blood sports supporter and writes exclusively for the Countryside Alliance. This makes sense when you look at both cull zones in West Somerset and West Gloucestershire; both centers are home too many pheasant shooting estates and awash with an array of blood sports enthusiasts. The Countryside Alliance is a political pressure group working to overturn the hunting ban and promote blood sports in the countryside and Mr. Robinson was working for Lynton Crosby’s company; and Lynton Crosby has been put in charge of the Tory election machine to get the Tories elected with a working majority at the next general election.
The Countryside Alliance has been very active in a smear offensive against the RSPCA following the society’s successful conviction for illegal hunting against the Prime Ministers Fox Hunt and they have also been a loggerheads with the RSPB over the use of lead polluting ammunition used for game bird and water fowl shooting, a game they call wildlife conservation and they make a big blasting noise about it!
They are various grouping within the countryside that has the view that wildlife as a nuisance and the badger in particular in relation to pheasant shoots. More generally in the rush for quick profits as solar farms and bio-fuel cropts are developed the overarching desire to have no legally protected wildlife is a goal for many countryside businesses. Hunting, shooting, snaring and poisoning are the traditional wildlife management techniques deployed and why should they be force to change; “it’s our tradition!” is the usual cry for the indefensible actions that they deploy against the wildlife.
Each day this cull continues more and more people will switch away from British farm products as this it is the only tangible way to register their protest.
We cannot be continually fed these lies about bovine TB and how the number of badgers is out of control. For the health of the nation we need to eat less dairy products and if we eat meat we need to know what meat it is; either horse or bovine TB infected beef!
Sanctions leveled against our own farming industry would appear the only way forward at present as the unquestioned spin emerges for both DEFRA and the NFU and blindly supported by Ministers who should have at least questioned what was being asked of them, I refer to David Heath in particular with having a boss like Owen Patterson, just burring his head in the sand can only work for a short period of time.
The thought that a Conservative government with a working majority would be in place as this badger cull is rolled out to many other areas would leave the country well and truly divided. The countryside will be awash with hunters and shooters and very little natural wildlife would be left. We may even see the revamping of BBC’s SpringWatch and AutumnWatch as an all embracing HuntWatch where most of the badgers will be dead and the foxes breed for hunting - a brave new countryside!
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But perhaps the worst aspect of the Badger Cull is the way that the shooting has been allocated to private companies. These companies are then able to recruit the local lampers, terrier-men, gamekeepers and general blood sports hobbyists.
A Holy Trinity of Natural England, National Farmers Union and DEFRA have baked together in Hell this Bloody Badger Cull.
Unless these culls are stopped soon the National Farmers Union will have created a new blood sport based on ‘Badger Baiting’ but this time with peanuts laced with treacle placed around the badger setts and the shooters lined up to pick them off as the iconic badger, emblem of all the Wildlife Trusts emerges from his sett to enjoy a night of foraging. This is what the Badger has done since the dawn of the Ice Age and now to be shot “free range” simply to appease the dirty farmer.
Now is the time to ditch the dairy and save the badger.
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