Petition calls for changes to cull rules
POLICY allowing farmers to cull badgers on county council-owned land could change.
A petition of 779 signatures against the current approach, which permits farmers on council land to "exercise their own discretion" in badger culling, was presented to Gloucestershire County Council's scrutiny committee yesterday.
Around 20 campaigners presented the petition and, after a lengthy debate, the committee voted in favour of the issue being put to the full council. Should the current policy remain, the committee recommended that all tenants should provide evidence of risk assessments done in relation to public safety.
Councillor Bill Crowther (LD, Hucclecote) said: "We should be urging our tenants not to allow badger culling due to the safety issues that will arise. The whole thing is a complete disaster. We must ask our tenants to notify us and then ask them what risk assessments have been done."
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Liz Gaffer, spokesman for Gloucestershire Against Badger Shooting, said: "You, the council, should consider changing the agreement and you should be encouraging your tenants to go down alternative routes."
Comments
by TimMessanger
Thursday, September 27 2012, 11:59AM
“"When did things start to go wrong?
Farmers in high incidence areas of England are now being asked to foot the bill for culling badgers when in 1986 it was decided not to continue funding the very effective clean ring strategy because it was deemed to be too expensive.
The 'clean ring strategy' was introduced in 1982 and involved cage trapping badgers on land occupied by affected cattle herds, then on adjoining land, expanding outwards until no further infected animals were captured.
In 1986 this approach was replaced by the 'interim strategy' which involved culling badgers only on land occupied by affected cattle herds. The last 'interim' culls were performed in 1998, prior to the start of the badger culling trial known as the RBCT.
This 'interim' strategy was recommended and implemented because a cost-benefit analysis showed the high cost of the clean ring policy could not be economically justified.
What a mistake!!
Many farmers in high incidence areas are now leaving the industry because of the expense and lingering hardship associated with bovine TB.
In 2000, according to Customs & Excise, the annual UK dairy trade deficit was less than £0.5b. In the ten years since then the deficit has steadily increased so that in 2010 the deficit exceeded £1.2b.
What is seen as the future for farming in South West England and what are the reasons behind this distinct lack of willingness to allocate the necessary resource and commitment to address bovine TB in this country?
There are two reasons why the burgeoning badger population is not being addressed to achieve TB free status. One is the government's unwillingness to make a commitment and put serious investment into achieving a long term aim. The other is loss of votes in the face of a misinformed public who do not understand the reasons why the EU is not sanctioning cattle vaccination and why badger vaccination is currently seen as an unproven, high risk, distant solution for which badger trials on an oral vaccine in England and Wales have not even started.
The bovinetb site has a lot of usefull stuff including history etc and nice pretty pictures (graphs) http://tinyurl.com/8s2cjdj
Q and A is available from here nice and easy to understand http://tinyurl.com/8s2cjdjdocs/nps4FB6.tmp.pdf
EU report on bTB http://tinyurl.com/8esb3cd"”
by dodge102
Thursday, September 27 2012, 11:36AM
“Hunt Saboteurs yesterday stopped members of the Ledbury Hunt digging a badger sett near Redmarley, Gloucestershire (in the badger cull zone) after a fox the hunters had been illegally chasing took shelter there. This is the mentality of the people we are up against. They don't care about the law, they think they can slaughter our wildlife at will and this cull just gives them a green light for further criminality.
http://tinyurl.com/butgxuh
http://tinyurl.com/bvjp9rv”