Badger culls to end and be replaced by TB jabs
Move angers farmers who have lost whole herds
CULLING badgers to prevent tuberculosis spreading among cattle will end within five years, ministers said yesterday.
Instead of being shot in their thousands, badgers will now be vaccinated instead – a move likely to enrage farmers.
The badger cull formed a central pillar of the previous Government’s efforts to reduce TB in cattle.
But the Labour administration said it would stop the cull by 2029, carry out a census of badgers and develop vaccines for badgers and cattle.
TB is often passed by close contact between infected and non-infected animals, including cattle themselves.
More than 278,000 cattle have been compulsorily slaughtered and 230,000 badgers have been killed in efforts to control the disease since culling began in 2013. The process is thought to cost taxpayers more than £100million every year.
Tom Bradshaw, president of the National Farmers’ Union said last night: ‘This terrible disease continues to plague farmers and their livestock. While significant elements of the Government’s proposed TB strategy are still being researched and not yet deployable, they must not overlook the contribution of the successful disease control model. Scientific papers show that targeted badger culling provides success.’
In February, a major study found that after four years of culling ‘the herd incidence rate of TB reduced by 56 per cent’, prompting Countryside Alliance chief executive Tim Bonner to say: ‘Put simply, culling has worked.’
however, campaigners including Queen guitarist Brian May and broadcaster Chris Packham have called for an end to the cull, which has devastated badger populations in the Midlands, the West and the South West.
Ministers claim vaccination will create progressively healthier badger populations.
Rural affairs minister Daniel Zeichner said: ‘Bovine tuberculosis has devastated farmers and wildlife for too long. It has placed dreadful hardship on farmers and has taken a terrible toll on our badger populations. No more.’
But Peter hambly, of the Badger Trust, said the announcement focused ‘too much on badgers rather than cattle, when cattle are the main spreaders of this cattle disease’. he added: ‘It admits the Government doesn’t know how many badgers are left. They haven’t counted them and haven’t tested them but continue to slaughter them.’