31/7/2009

A Welsh proposal to cull badgers to prevent bovine TB was today labelled an unscientific slaughter.

Badger Trust said the Welsh Assembly's move was perverse, politically motivated, and without any significant scientific validation.

Michael Hughes, Director of Badger Trust, said that recent history, the best, peer-reviewed science, and commonsense, all say this is a flawed, futile, irrational decision.

Wales Chief veterinary officer Christianne Glossop says she hopes powers to cull badgers as part of a plan to eradicate the disease could be in place by the autumn.

Last year more than 12,000 cattle in Wales were slaughtered because of TB. By 2014 taxpayers could be paying more than £80m to farmers in compensation if the disease continues to escalate at the current rate.

But Badger Trust says a bovine TB epidemic which began in the 1930s was resolved in the late 1960s by a series of cattle control measures - without one badger being killed or implicated.

At one stage, says Badger Trust, 40 per cent of the national herd was infected (the current epidemic is very much smaller). Then, as now, cattle-to-cattle spread was the root cause.

“Wales is currently suffering from the highest rate of bovine TB in the UK,� says Badger Trust. “Why? In part it's a direct result of increased testing. If you test more often, you find
more disease. The payback comes later. Disease levels begin to fall and are eventually brought under control.

“A recent statement by Rural Affairs Minister Elin Jones helps prove the point. On July 9 she announced that Health Check Wales, the Assembly's improved testing regime, had found, and removed, disease in cattle that might otherwise not have been found until 2012 - disease, in other words, which would
have festered and spread, undetected, for years.

“But those in favour of a badger slaughter won't have it. They are adamant and impatient. TB numbers are rising, they say, so badgers must be to blame.�