Thursday 4 October 2018

Secret filming reveals hidden cruelty of licensed badger culls



‘Brutal slaughter’ will cost £1,000 per animal, claim campaigners, as government defends battle to beat bovine TB
Sun 30 Sep 2018 10.00 BSTLast modified on Sun 30 Sep 2018 10.26 BST
Trapped in a cage and shot at close range, the badger takes almost a minute to die. Covert footage published online by the Observer, the first to be shared publicly, shows the main method of dispatching Britain’s largest indigenous carnivore as part of a controversial cull now being expanded by the environment secretary, Michael Gove, which farmers insist is vital to curb the spread of TB in cattle.
Taken in Cumbria by the Hunt Investigation Team, it has been released by animal rights groups for maximum political effect ahead of the Conservative party conference, as Gove considers a key report on the government’s TB eradication strategy. Animal rights activists said the footage raised questions about how the cull works.
 “The brutal slaughter of tens of thousands of badgers in the biggest destruction of a protected species in living memory is a national disgrace,” said Dominic Dyer, CEO of the Badger Trust. “This war on wildlife has been carried out in secrecy by poorly paid contractors with no independent monitoring or concern for animal welfare or public safety. The film footage that has emerged from Cumbria is the first time we have seen evidence of cull contractors at work. It clearly shows a badger taking over 50 seconds to die after being shot in a cage, and contractors removing it from the site without bagging and sealing the carcass in line with government TB biosecurity guidelines.”

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