A Good Day For Badgers
Jul 4th, 2008 by Eats Wombats
The BBC reports: The government has decided that culling badgers in England to control the spread of bovine tuberculosis won’t work. Predictably, the National Farmers’ Union is outraged and is threatening court action and a demonstration next week.
This morning I read the report of an independent study group set up by the government to look into the issue. I was surprised, yet again, to find that the fact that TB is endemic in wild rabbits was not mentioned, but overall the study, which cost £34 million and the lives of nearly 11,000 badgers, appears definitive. It concludes
Our overall conclusion is that after careful consideration of all the RBCT [Randomised Badger Culling Trial] and other data presented in this report, including an economic assessment, that badger culling cannot meaningfully contribute to the control of cattle TB in Britain.
We further conclude from the scientific evidence available, that the rigorous application of heightened control measures directly targeting cattle will reverse the year-on-year increase in the incidence of cattle TB and halt the geographical spread of the disease.
While badgers can carry and transmit TB, which they may get from contact with cattle, culling doesn’t work and the cost/benefit is negative. Even worse, not just is culling ineffective, it can actually exacerbate the problem: reducing the badger population causes badgers, including infected animals, to range further.
The report on the experimental trials to determine the effectiveness of culling is impressively thorough and documents some difficulties I might not have expected. Some farmers agreed to participate in the trial but not to culling of any badgers. This undermined the experimental protocol, which was also subject to sabotage by badger lovers wrecking traps. How the analysis was done objectively despite such problems is a story in itself and the conclusions are, to my mind, overwhelmingly supported.
I visited the National Farmers’ Union website and emailed to say that I would support funding for research (into vaccines, diagnostics etc.) and compensation but that if they proceed with demanding a right to cull badgers then I would boycott British agricultural produce. And not because I like fluffy, cute little badgers, but because the science is against them and acceding to their demands would be waste of public money.
Some farmers will break the law anyway and one posted as much on a BBC website right away, posting anonymously
I’ve got news for the government – the countryside is big and deserted, and farmers have shotguns. They’ll do what they need to do to protect their herds, and the government will be none the wiser.
What he fails to understand is that he’ll have to shoot his neighbour too, the one who lets badgers live on his land. To this farmer with a gun the badger is just vermin, a creature who must pay with its life, just in case.
The public who oppose him, perhaps because badgers are attractive animals, and the politicians who listen to their constituents, are dismissed as ignorant, justifiably in some cases, but at same time as they’re expected to foot the bill for both overpriced food and for the consequences of every agricultural disaster such as BSE.
So the farmers fail to realize that being right, which they aren’t, doesn’t mean winning the argument. This was famously established already when Shell had to yield to public pressure, orchestrated by Greenpeace, over the disposal of the Brent Spar platform.
Unforutunately, I won’t be able to tell which farmers are badger friendly.
Will the NFU realize the public is overwhelmingly against it? It would only take a week of the public boycotting British beef to let them know and maybe a bit longer to really to get their attention.
Feel free to visit the NFU website and tell them that you plan to boycott British beef if they don’t change their ways!
