The Badger Cull - A Wake up Call Dairy and Meat Products and the Welfare of the Animals

One thing for sure that the current debate regarding the Badger Cull raises is the fact that people are looking more closely at what they eat. This year alone we have had the horse meat scandal in which answers are not forth coming at present and the continuing wish for many in the farming sector to proceed at all costs with the extended Badger Cull for the next 25 years with legal gassing as a further cheaper option under consideration!

The police are working closely with the NFU Sponsored Shooters.

The shooting of free running badgers was pushed through by pro-hunt mad Environment Minster Owen Paterson who has very close links with the Countryside Alliance, so job done and another blood sport has been created for alliance members. With the low number of badgers in the cull zones perhaps due to the illegal gassing by farmers and current gassing research being undertaken by DEFRA, one wonders who is driving this debate, the NFU?

The madness continues as numbers are made up with cage trapping of badgers and then shooting them! Now just about everyone else using cage trapping is vaccinating the captured badgers, who probably got infected by bTB from cattle, but no not the NFU and the farmers; out comes the 12 bore shotgun and they are blasted around the farmyard. And guess what some farmers may be receiving grants as part of a ‘Countryside Guardianship’ scheme, this is complete madness and we are as taxpayers footing the bill and having no say in the process. 

This is a bit like the National Union of Shop Workers (NUSW) being give the authority to determine the opening hours for all high street and retail park shops, you just could not make it up! 

This Mall is Under Control of the NUSW

But here we have the NFU under the leadership of Kim Jong Kendall dictating to both DEFRA and Natural England that farmers want the badgers culled and vaccination is not an option for them, no badger or cattle vaccination will take place under there watch. The NFU is basically a Trade Association for large estates and farms and represents around 18% of all farmers, it is unelected and unaccountable, but is not short of money!

With the advances in technology and the economies of scale we all need to take stock of what we are prepared to accept in our life style. The science says we need to eat more plant food as the strains of meat production affects our climate.

The welfare of the animals, the environment, our moral position and the science states we need to change and change soon and doing nothing is no longer an option.