Science shows cattle are the main
cause of bovine TB spread, so badger slaughter makes no sense. Politics and
economics are behind this catastrophic policy
Monday 19 December
2016 13.07 GMTLast modified on Tuesday 20 December 201611.35 GMT
More than 10,000 badgers have been
killed this autumn in a cull supposedly to combat the disease
of bovine TB in cattle. This was the fourth year of culling
badgers but, in truth, we have been slaughtering our largest
wild carnivore for decades. We have to ask one question: why has this bloody
killing gone on for so long?
I use the b-word more as an
adjective than an intensifier, since the blood of the innocents continues to be
spilt. Scientists dislike value judgments such as “innocent” and “guilty”. But
even if the badger was “guilty” of spreading bovine TB to cattle, it would be
an innocent victim of man’s arrogance and blind stupidity.
More than 30 years ago, while
working for theWorld
Wildlife Fund, I was asked to write a book about badgers and bovine
TB. The Fate
of the Badger was published in 1986. I never thought the
controversy over controlling the bovine TB in cattle by killing a protected
wild animal would become such a tortuous saga. Astonishingly, in the three
decades since then, nothing much has changed.
Thirty years ago we aimed to
fight the official slaughter of a protected species through government-led
badger culls by science not emotion. Then we met politics.
For three years I was an adviser
to the government – a depressing experience. I had a mole in the Ministry
of Agriculture, Food and Fisheries (now Defra). He told me
that the decision to cull badgers was taken at No 10. My staunchest ally at
that time was the great
Phil Drabble, the countryman and presenter of One Man and His
Dog. He would phone me with a stream of unprintable invective against the
department. Apart from being a TV celebrity, he wrote for The Field magazine
and had a direct line of communication with our opponents. Where is his
equivalent today?
Politicians rise because they are
clever, but few are blessed with a scientific mind. The myth of
badger culpability for bovine TB
in cattle is rooted in poor science – and economics.
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