‘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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