Bovine Tuberculosis – bTB and Cull
The badger cull is now in its tenth year and has been steadily rolled out across much of Britain despite the facts being consistently presented to the Conservative Government that badgers are not the problem – this is a cattle disease.
The cull finally came to Warwickshire in September 2020. This is an “edge county” and for a number of years, our badgers escaped the bullet, but government policy decreed that more badgers need to be slaughtered to appease groups of landowners and farmers and their supporting organisations who view them as vermin and who are bent on eradicating them.
To date, over the 2020/2021 culling season, a total of 2,849 badgers have lost their lives in the most inhumane ways imaginable. Free shooting a badger often ends in a slow and agonising death. Furthermore, following a scientific study we participated in during 2017, which showed that over 98% of the county’s badgers show no signs at all of the disease, the government has thus sanctioned shooting thousands of healthy badgers, which are also a protected species!
Meanwhile, little attention is being paid to how we can resolve the prevalence of the disease in cattle herds. There are no strict biosecurity measures as there were during the Foot and Mouth disease outbreak some years ago, cattle continue to be moved in their millions all over the country, and the testing of cattle for the disease is woefully inadequate. You don’t need to be a scientist to work out that if the tests are inadequate that means there’s a high number of cattle being moved who are carrying and spreading the disease. This also means that the disease will perpetuate, even if all badgers are eradicated.
The Badger Trust, as well as our colleagues in badger groups up and down the country, have been campaigning tirelessly to have the cull stopped. After this coming season, which starts this month, there will have been in excess of 200,000 badgers needlessly killed. Many of these will have been killed on land that doesn’t even have cattle!
A lot of science-based and factual information has been gathered and collated. We have provided links on this page to help you to understand what is going on and how you can help us with the campaign to Can the Cull.
And finally, you, the taxpayer, are paying for this slaughter of a healthy and iconic species. The shooters receive payment for every badger they kill, which in effect is a bounty and an incentive to kill as many as they can. There is no monitoring of cull activities, so the shooters are essentially mercenaries out killing in our fields.
What Can I do?
Download our Guide on taking action
Link is below.
WRITE TO your local MP
Take a look at our downloadable templates and use the information write your own personalised message
WRITE TO YOUR LOCAL PAPER
The list can be found in our Can the Cull pamphlet
Join the Wounded Badger Patrols
Help to stop the shooters – there is advice on how to do this and to stay safe
Help us to survey and monitor setts
We provide information on how to do this In the link below.