Shropshire Badger Group has condemned the latest Government figures revealing that 3,580 badgers were shot in Shropshire during the unscientific cull started last Autumn.
The group says the true figure will be nearer 4,000 when parts of north and east Shropshire are added though referred to as a Staffordshire zone. This is despite clear evidence that very few badgers carry bovine TB and in almost all cases of cattle infection the animals have caught it from other cattle.
The group said: “Many farmers have been misled into believing that killing badgers will stop bTB in their herds, but pretty much as many cattle were sent to premature slaughter last year by farmers across England, as in 2012 when the present badger culling policy began. In just one recently published paper, the ‘Badgers Found Dead Study’ the figures show that badgers are not a reservoir for bovine TB but like many other animals, both wild and domesticated such as sheep and deer – they’re just another spillover host.”
Jim Ashley, Chairman of Shropshire Badger Group firmly believes that “English farmers have been totally failed by the Government’s handling of bovine TB because of their insistence on using the 70 year old SICCT, skin test, introduced just after WW2 as a screening test for farmers who wished to sell safe milk from the farm gate. The test is notoriously inaccurate, sometimes no better than 50% reliable, but that means that farmers unnecessarily lose more healthy cattle because infected animals are hidden, silently spreading the disease through their own and neighbours’ herds.”
Meanwhile, Vets are not allowed to routinely use the better blood testing methods such as Gamma Interferon and more recently Actiphage both of which provide much more specific and accurate results. Instead, farmers still have to rely on a test that was launched at about the same time as the Spitfire went into service.
The groups say that the situation has been made worse by the Government’s painfully slow development of a cattle vaccine. Trials of the vaccine have only just begun despite it being in development and promised on and off for the past 20 years.
Despite Defra’s most recent cynical claim that ‘culling would effectively be phased out after 2022’, badger culling in Shropshire will take place for at least a further 3 years, with thousands more badgers doomed to be shot, some suffering a lingering and agonising death. Meanwhile, costs to taxpayers and heartache for farmers will continue to rise because culling barely affects disease rates in cattle.”
Sharon Davies-Culham, Shropshire Badger Vaccination Project Co-ordinator said: “We are horrified and sickened by the numbers of badgers killed in Shropshire under this expensive, discredited policy. We have been working successfully with independently minded farmers and landowners across the County to vaccinate badgers against bovine TB. This approach is cheaper and more effective than culling, conferring immunity on unborn cubs. Our service has been available free or atcost, using trained and dedicated volunteers committed to help farmers fight this awful disease. Other counties run similar schemes, with several directly funded by Defra! So given there is an alternative, we fail to see why culling is necessary at all in Shropshire.”
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