Stopping the Badger Cull

By Indira Prasad

Despite the success of vaccine trials, the badger cull is to be extended again in 2016 to more areas of the country with new cull zones in Herefordshire, Dorset, Cornwall and Gloucestershire.

The link between Bovine Tuberculosis (BTB), the badger population and the controversy surrounding the issue can be traced back to the early 1970’s when a dead badger was identified on a farm in Gloucestershire.

Today, in a climate of economic uncertainty and crippling austerity the government has so far spent £25million of taxpayers’ money on needlessly slaughtering over 4000 badgers, denting our ecosystem. An issue which has been taken up by numerous animal rights groups such as ‘Stop the Cull’ as licenses have been implemented enabling the slaughter of a damaging portion of our wildlife. 2013 saw Gloucestershire and Somerset pilot the first badger cull, which was repeated in 2014, and in 2015 it was announced that the cull would be extended to Dorset with a target of up to 835 badgers being eliminated in that area alone.

DEFRA (Department for environment, food and rural affairs) confirmed that last year’s cull had ‘met targets’ of 1,467 badger deaths across all three zones, and since pilot culls began over 4000 badgers have been killed under licence.

Given the public resources invested in the cull, it may come as a surprise that findings show unequivocally that the cull is not only ineffective but fails to meet the humanness criteria. Autopsies have shown that around 25% of badgers took up to 5 minutes to die after being shot.

Bovine tuberculosis exists within the overwhelming majority of mammals in British wildlife. Therefore singling out the badger population is ineffective in managing the disease in cattle. The millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money spent is an outright waste, as independent expert panels have proven over and over again.

DEFRA’s own data suggests that while 15% of badgers may test positive for BTB, just 1.6% are capable of passing on the disease, meaning 98.4% of badgers pose no risk to cattle at all. The culling of badgers has actually been proven to increase the levels of BTB in cattle due to perturbation, whereby the removal of a proportion of the badger population in a particular area causes the rest of the population to behave in different, unusual ways.

There are a number of cheaper, humane and more effective methods of controlling BTB, such as cattle vaccination, badger vaccination and improved biosecurity. The management of BTB in Wales is testament to this, where the less costly option of vaccination instead of culling badgers has led to a 48% decrease in cattle being slaughtered, and unlike culling there is no chance of vaccination making TB in cattle worse.

Despite the damage to our ecosystem and outright cruelty, we should also acknowledge that the badger cull is an utter waste of public resources. In September 2015, the Freedom of Information figures revealed that the cost of the cull per badger stood at £6,775. A total of £25million of taxpayers’ money has been wasted on the cull over the past few years, with just under £16.8 million being spent in 2015.

This year 7 new zones will be included across Dorset, Cornwall, Herefordshire and Gloucestershire; we can only expect the number of badgers culled to skyrocket, along with the amount of taxpayers’ money spent.

When we parallel the economic figures with the ineffectiveness of the badger cull in achieving its proposed aims; public outrage over the cull becomes an understandable right of the entire working class. As socialists it is our obligation to take a stance against the cull, understanding it for what it is; an ill-advised politically led policy which is unscientific, unethical and a financial disaster.

Can we justify a dramatic excess of £16.9 million of taxpayers’ money needlessly spent on another year systematically eliminating our wildlife?

Leicester Animal Rights along with members of Socialist Party are organising the ‘Leicester March Against The Badger Cull’ on May 21st. The march will begin at 12:30pm at Victoria Park (LE1 7RU) and culminate in Leicester City Centre where there will be guest speakers from the Badger Trust and Born Free Foundation.