Concern at change to badger cull rules
CAMPAIGNERS have criticised Defra for changes to regulations over the way badgers could be culled.
The Government body decided a month ago to change regulations over the distance a badger can be killed with a shotgun from, reducing it from 20 metres to 10.
A spokesman for Defra said the decision was made a month ago after scientific studies and on the grounds of humanity.
A date has not yet been set for the badger trial cull that will be taking place in Gloucestershire.
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But Stroud's Jeanne Berry, from the Badger Party, criticised the decision.
She said: "This last minute change to the guidance just goes to show that this whole process has not been thought through and is only now being reviewed in the light of public concerns.
"Despite these changes the risk to the public remains very high especially as public bodies are refusing to reveal where the shooting will take place which is in flagrant breach of the best practice guidelines."
Comments
by badgerhugger
Tuesday, September 11 2012, 1:03PM
“The difficulty will be getting the badgers to hold one end of the tape measure.
It will be more difficult to get within 10 metres of a badger than 20 metres. This will result in more botched shots and wounded badgers.
Badgers will be reluctant to emerge or will not stay around within 10 meters of the shooters, so the 70% eradication will fail.
The shooters are more likely to shoot themselves in the foot.”
by dodgethebulle
Tuesday, September 11 2012, 12:07PM
“Independent scientific studies have shown that culling would be of little help in reducing bovine TB, and even suggest that it could make things worse in some areas. To hear the facts, press play on the video below.
If you want the government to make the sensible choice. Sign the Petition
http://tinyurl.com/9ndb3ty
http://tinyurl.com/9lmonj3”
by badgerhugger
Friday, September 07 2012, 3:51PM
“If it were not for the Badger Trust, hundreds of badgers would have been shot by now, using shotguns at 20 metres. Now they decide it would not be humane. This comes just in time for the judicial review appeal. I would like to see the report detailing the scientific studies which supposedly concluded just a month ago.”
by dodgethebulle
Friday, September 07 2012, 1:22AM
“The official policy in Britain (and the rest of the European Union) is to eradicate bovine TB from cattle. This is laid out in 'The Bovine TB Eradication Programme For England' (DEFRA 2011b ). It is true that disease eradication has been achieved for smallpox in humans, and has recently been claimed for rinderpest in cattle. These diseases, however, have single maintenance hosts and hence eradication is a meaninful objective (CFSPH, 2008 ). But no disease with multiple maintenance hosts has ever been eradicated - and may never be. Moreover global eradication programmes are extremely expensive and can have very adverse side-effects, especially in relation to diverting resources from effective control methods (see Caplan, 2009 on 'Is eradication ethical?').
Even disease elimination - namely reduction to zero in the incidence of infection within a specified geographical area - is impractical when you have several wild maintenance hosts as with bovine TB. TB infected cattle can be removed using the 'test and cull' approach, with affected herds put under movement restriction and re-tested periodically to eliminate cattle that may shed the organism. But this approach cannot be used for wildlife reservoir species, which in Britain means badgers and fallow deer. Because sick badgers are more likely to get culled, large scale pro-active culls (actually a misuse of the term 'cull') may sometimes reduce the disease prevalence in badgers (Corner et al., 2008 ), but cannot possibly eliminate infections in a wild population, therefore given these facts, could it be the UK government has adopted a dysfunctional disease control policy merely to placate wealthy livestock farmers and avoid spending money?
If so, it is almost as unfair to farmers as it is to the badgers...
http://tinyurl.com/9ra96cg
https://http://tinyurl.com/9nmca3q”