22 February 2014
On Saturday February 22nd Mark Dawes of Waltham Forest and Redbridge Green Party joined other Greens and over a thousand other people in a march against the badger cull. The march was held in central Birmingham where the National Farmers Union (NFU) are meeting - the NFU having advocated the badger cull.
The supposed reason for the badger cull is to stop the spread of TB in cattle, but science tells us that the cull will be ineffective.
Even by its own criteria, the cull has been a complete failure.
With less two thousand badgers killed at an estimated cost of over £7 million, that’s a cost of over £4,000 per animal killed.
As over 80% of badgers are not thought to carry TB, this cruel cull would have a negligible effect in stopping TB in cattle.
Far more effective would be a vaccination programme as had been carried out in Wales – and far cheaper too, as the cost of vaccinating badgers is less than £700 per animal, a fifth of the cost of killing them. And real problem is factory farming which leads to more disease in animals as they are far less healthy being kept in poor conditions.
Culling badgers is very cruel but will also have a detrimental effect on the eco-system and the Government has – once again - shown itself to be ignorant of environmental issues.
“The Government sought to scapegoat badgers because it was too cowardly to tackle the real problem that is bad farming practices,” said Mark Dawes of Waltham Forest and Redbridge Green Party. “The cull has caused great suffering for no good reason and Defra Secretary Owen Paterson who oversaw this policy and who blamed the failure of the badger cull on the badgers for moving the goalposts should resign,” he added.
