Gloucestershire Badger Cull Extended by 8 Weeks

29th Octo­ber

Humane Society UK appalled & flabbergasted at “madness” of Gloucestershire badger cull 8 Week extension, risks spreading bTB

Lead­ing ani­mal wel­fare char­i­ty, Humane Soci­ety Inter­na­tion­al UK, is appalled by news that an eight week exten­sion to the Glouces­ter­shire bad­ger cull has been grant­ed by Nat­ur­al Eng­land. The char­i­ty warns that pro­long­ing the shoot­ing is the very worst thing the gov­ern­ment can do because it increas­es the risk of spread­ing bovine TB as bad­gers flee the area.

Per­tur­ba­tion dan­ger
The exten­sion of the killing peri­od in Glouces­ter­shire more than dou­bles the orig­i­nal six weeks to 14 weeks. The sem­i­nal Ran­domised Bad­ger Culling Tri­al high­light­ed the impor­tance of any cull to be done quick­ly because of the dan­ger of per­tur­ba­tion.

Fias­co
Mark Jones, Glouces­ter­shire res­i­dent and Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of HSI UK said: “I am appalled & flab­ber­gast­ed that an eight week exten­sion has been grant­ed to DEFRA’s bad­ger killing fias­co in Glouces­ter­shire. By extend­ing culls here as well as in Som­er­set, the pilots are mov­ing even more dan­ger­ous­ly away from the rec­om­men­da­tions of the Ran­domised Bad­ger Culling Tri­al which were very clear – the longer you sub­ject bad­gers to this sort of dis­rup­tion, the greater the risk of wors­en­ing the spread of bovine TB among both bad­gers and cat­tle. It is utter­ly illog­i­cal to con­tin­ue with a pol­i­cy that has already proven such a dis­as­ter, and flies square­ly in the face of sound sci­en­tif­ic advice. Sure­ly some­body in Gov­ern­ment can put a stop to Owen Paterson’s bad­ger cull mad­ness before it’s too late.”

In Glouces­ter­shire 708 out of a tar­get 1,650 bad­gers have been killed. In Som­er­set 850 bad­gers out of a tar­get 1,020 have been shot.

HSI UK has also writ­ten to Owen Pater­son to ask him to explain him­self over unsub­stan­ti­at­ed claims he made last week about bad­ger suf­fer­ing. On 10th Octo­ber he stat­ed in a par­lia­men­tary answer to a ques­tion from Angela Smith MP that ‘…some of the ani­mals we have shot have been des­per­ate­ly sick-in the final stages of dis­ease…’.

No bTB tests on bad­ger car­cass­es
Mark Jones said: “As a vet I find Mr Paterson’s claim that bad­gers shot in the pilot culls were ‘des­per­ate­ly sick’ high­ly sus­pi­cious. I know of no evi­dence to back this up, indeed all the avail­able data sug­gests that even where bovine TB is rife among cat­tle, only a tiny pro­por­tion of bad­gers will be suf­fer­ing any symp­toms of the dis­ease. The fig­ure is per­haps as low as one in a hun­dred. As Mr Pater­son has refused to have the bad­ger car­cas­es test­ed for TB, he can­not pos­si­bly have any sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly cred­i­ble data to sup­port his asser­tion and nobody will be per­mit­ted to chal­lenge his claim because DEFRA is hav­ing all the bod­ies incin­er­at­ed. As usu­al, the Sec­re­tary of State is fond of mak­ing wild asser­tions with­out pro­vid­ing a shred of evi­dence to sup­port them but in doing so his own cred­i­bil­i­ty is crum­bling day by day. It is not ani­mal groups but the Gov­ern­ment this is caus­ing bad­gers to suf­fer. It is men armed with rifles and shot­guns tak­ing pot-shots at these ani­mals who are con­demn­ing many to a painful death and no amount of cre­ative account­ing by Mr Pater­son will change that.”