Ahead of a meeting with the Environment Secretary Liz Truss
on the 3 March, the Badger Trust has called on the National Farmers’ Union to
stop misleading the public by making claims over the impact of badger culling
on TB rates in cattle in the Gloucestershire and Somerset cull zones, which
have no scientific foundation and are not supported by Government data from the
pilot badger culls.
At the NFU Annual Conference in Birmingham on Tuesday 24
February, the NFU President Meurig Raymond stated: “I want to stress that in
the two pilot areas in Somerset and Gloucestershire we are already seeing that
TB incidence on farms has declined. Not just by a small amount either, in the
Somerset Pilot area TB incidence on farms has decreased from 34% to 11%
compared with two years’ ago”.
He then went on to say: “just two days’ ago, one of our
Gloucestershire members was given the fantastic news that his farm is now clear
of TB for the first time in 11 years. He is very clear that the only thing
that’s changed on his farm is that we are now doing something to control the
disease in wildlife”.
When making these statements the NFU President at no point
confirmed that it was far more likely these reductions in TB (which have also
been seen outside of the cull zones) were due to tighter testing, movement and
biosecurity controls forced on the UK farming sector by the European Commission
in 2012. He also made no mention of the fact that DEFRA have not released any
data on the pilot culls to support any claims about the impact of badger
culling on TB rates in cattle.
In responding to the claims by the NFU, the CEO of the
Badger Trust said:
“Nigel Gibbens, the DEFRA Chief Veterinary Officer, recently
stated that: 'the fall in TB outbreaks in cattle herds, cannot be attributed
either to the pilot culls or in Wales to their badger vaccination programme. It
is to do with continued strengthening of the cattle measures.'
“Meurig Raymond seems to have forgotten these important
facts when it comes to his NFU conference speech.
“The Badger Trust would never make any claims about the
impact of badger vaccination without scientific evidence to back it up and we
expect the NFU to do the same, when it comes to making claims about the impact
of badger culling.
“We must deal in facts not fiction when it comes to
assessing the impact of the badger culls on lowering bovine TB. When it comes
to real facts the case against the badger cull policy is damning.
“Approximately £15 million has been spent killing 2476
badgers to date (£6058 a badger). None of these culled badgers were tested for
TB, but data from a Government-led scientific trial and results from badgers
tested by DEFRA in 2013 for the European Food Safety Authority, indicate a
disease rate no higher than 15%.
“Many of these badgers were shot by poorly trained marksmen
with no effective monitoring and took up to 10 to 15 minutes to die a long painful
death by multiple gunshot wounds.
“This is despite the fact that the DEFRA Chief Scientist Ian
Boyd confirmed at an NFU TB conference in November 2014, that the transmission
rate of TB from badgers to cattle is less than 6%. The key route of infection
is cattle to cattle transfer.”
It's clear that the Badger Trust's observations are based on scientific fact whereas the NFU's position is based on myth and supposition.
The NFU would do well to focus on improving poor and inadequate husbandry rather than its unjustifiable default position, which is always to blame everyone and everything else. The fact that the demonisation of the badger population flies in the face of the evidence doesn't faze them, they just bluster on and on regardless.
It's the same with the fox population being used as an excuse for poor husbandry at lambing time. All the evidence shows foxes do not kill lambs, but still they are blamed for lamb mortality.
It's time governments stopped paying so much attention to the views of the NFU. Not only is a lot of their policy prospectus spurious nonsense, the vast majority of farmers are not even members.
It's clear that the Badger Trust's observations are based on scientific fact whereas the NFU's position is based on myth and supposition.
The NFU would do well to focus on improving poor and inadequate husbandry rather than its unjustifiable default position, which is always to blame everyone and everything else. The fact that the demonisation of the badger population flies in the face of the evidence doesn't faze them, they just bluster on and on regardless.
It's the same with the fox population being used as an excuse for poor husbandry at lambing time. All the evidence shows foxes do not kill lambs, but still they are blamed for lamb mortality.
It's time governments stopped paying so much attention to the views of the NFU. Not only is a lot of their policy prospectus spurious nonsense, the vast majority of farmers are not even members.
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