Badger Culling Spin

The new farm minister George Eustice says the government intends to cull badgers in many more areas next year, even though the two pilot culls failed to hit their six-week target with both zones needed to be extended and with a high police cost. Mr. Eustice said we are minded to go on next year and roll the cull out more widely he stated at the NFU tenant farmers conference on Thursday the 7th of November 2013. George Eustice won his seat with a majority of 66 votes so I suspect he can kiss his political career goodbye at the next election but perhaps his parting gesture will be launching a few badger culls in Cornwall?

The New Badger Killer Farming Minster

Mr. Eustice said also that DEFRA was keen to learn the lessons from both pilot zones and would be looking carefully at the “quite different results” when both culls had completed, as the government was inclined to roll out the culls to other TB hotspot areas. One assume from pressure from the NFU who would like to see gassing and snaring employed to kill more badgers cheaply that free shooting and cage trapping and shooting currently do.

An experimental investigation was, in fact, carried out re-fox numbers increasing in direct response to badger culling, and it was found that over a period of 2 years, "mean fox density increased by over 50% in the culled areas within two years. This could please the Countryside Alliance as they will see this as a means to overturn the hunting ban as all our pro-cull ministers, including Mr Paterson and Mr Cameron, are keen fox hunters.

As DEFRA has also contacted the Law Commission to review the range of animal welfare legislation so with the NFU driving the agenda forward we could see the return to the days when even healthy vaccinated badgers on Wildlife Trust Nature Reserves could be invaded by the Animal Health and Veterinary Laboratories Agency (AHVLA) staff, an executive agency working on behalf DEFRA, to remove badgers on Wildlife Trust reserves. This would probably be via gassing setts. This would be a return to the bad old days when the then Minster of Agriculture, Fishers and Food (MAFF) would be allowed onto any farm to gas with cyanide all the badgers setts.


It should be noted that the NFU who are driving these 'culls' are an unelected quango who represent, only 18% of farmers and are predominantly City investors and yet, they are allowed to dictate government agricultural and environmental policy!


These culls serve no-one but this undemocratic, feudal minority who believe they are above the law of the land.And now we hear that bovine TB has spread to the north east in County Durham, did the badgers use a rover ticket to get there? No of course not, badgers are banned from trains, but perhaps cattle with bovine TB from the South West were transported up!

Reading in the Farmers Guardian that North Wiltshire Tory MP and hunting fanatic James Gray stated that “One of my farmers has lost his entire herd on three separate occasions. He is reported to be driving a bus at the moment and going through terrible stress.”

Fox Hunting Mad Tory

I only hope that this new bus driving farmer is not on the school run as is he really in a fit state to be diving a bus with children onboard?

But on a more serious note the statements above and similar have been widely used to blame the badger for all the failings of the farming industry under the dictatorship of the NFU which has total control over DEFRA and Natural England.

The current bovine TB problem is down to restocking from West Country herds, which traditionally have a higher rate of bovine TB; after the Foot and Mouth outbreak in 2001.

If indeed this farmer has lost his entire herd on three separate occasions then what on earth is wrong on his farm? I have seen no research on how badgers infect cattle other than a 1971 experiment which involved placing cattle in a small concrete pen with a dozen infected badgers. This cruel experiment resulted in one calf getting infected after several months confinement and the government agency at the time; MAFF concluded at the time that this route of infection was negligible. It is now known that modern farming practices have allowed bovine TB to spill out into the wildlife and with poor testing and uncontrolled cattle movements many farms will retain the disease for many months as the cycle repeats during restocking under poor bio-security and testing measures.

Badgers will soon become rare footage on BBC Autumn and SpringWatch as the farmers percussion continues. Farmers have allowed the bovine TB problem to spread into the wildlife and now they seek to destroy there victims of their messy industry and all at the tax payers expense.