Farmers support renewed badger cull. But will consumers continue supporting THEM?
Aled Davies: He wants to be an Assembly Member for Mid and West Wales. He also wants to kill badgers for no very good reason.
Perhaps he thought he was only addressing farmers – many of whom seemed unreasonably keen on the idea. Maybe he didn’t realise he was also addressing This Writer. Too bad.
I mention that fact that farmers seemed “unreasonably” keen to kill badgers for a very simple reason:
The consumers – members of the public who support Welsh farmers when they buy their groceries – will never support it. They will abandon products made by farmers who support it.
That probably means all Welsh farmers. It seems unlikely anyone will be signing a register to show they supported this attempted genocide.
It would be remiss of This Writer not to note that the representatives of all the other parties present except Labour – UKIP, Plaid Cymru and the Liberal Democrats – also supported a cull, although only in particular circumstances.
There seems little evidence to support a cull. The Labour government in the Welsh Assembly had launched a vaccination programme – and the meeting heard that this had worked well until the vaccine ran out. It seems not enough was manufactured and what was available had been allocated to human beings.
It’s impossible to argue with the fight against TB in human beings – but it does raise the question of why insufficient amounts of the vaccine were available. The laws of supply and demand would necessitate at the Assembly government’s order should have been filled, so what happened? Nobody answered that at the hustings.
Then there’s the scientific evidence. NFU Cymru is calling for “evidence and science-based policy decision-making” in its own manifesto for the Assembly elections, but there’s precious little of that in the call for a cull.
Evidence shows that, while culling has reduced TB in areas of England where this has taken place, the disease has increased around the borders of those areas.
Evidence also shows that TB is cyclical, meaning that cutting its incidence down now won’t mean it can’t return later.
There may also be a question of bacteria causing TB remaining present in soil.
All of the above suggests that killing badgers won’t stop cows catching TB.
There needs to be a science- and evidence-based campaign against the disease, to protect farmers’ livestock and livelihood.
But that is a matter for the future.
For now, if you are a member of the public concerned about the future of the UK’s badger population, the message is clear:
Tories will kill badgers. Labour will attack bovine TB.
Join the Vox Political Facebook page.
If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:
Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.
Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:
The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here:
bovine tb is spread by humans badgers play no part.
this has been going on since after the war test done test done all around the country solution give badgers their injection for tb but then money again easier to cull them just like the disabled people jeff3
seems that anything tory – led excluding destruction of the whole tory party is highly undesirable.
The science which finished the last badger cull suggested very strongly that a cull would not clear the country of bovine TB. What’s with farmers and this half-witted MP and their blood lust?
He’s a candidate to be an Assembly Member. I won’t argue with the rest of your description.
Personally, I would rather see a nationwide cull of Tories.
Anyone who votes for this nasty piece of work can keep well away from me. People like that don’t deserve to enjoy the beauty of our beautiful wildlife, and furthermore it has been proven that vaccination works. Oh yes I know it is more expensive and less thrilling to the blood loving community which, fortunately, are in the minority. If farmers can’t control their businesses without resorting to killing of all our wildlife then they should look for other ways or making a decent living.
Any kind of cull seems to turn most farmers on. I hope, should this cull go ahead, that consumers will let farmers know exactly how they feel.
Many farmers are Tories, and it is in the nature of a Tory to express their imagined superiority to all else living on the planet by finding ways to torment or put an end to their existence, whether defenceless creatures or those parts of humanity they perceive to be inferior.
Tories see themselves as should-be rulers over the rest of us defectives, those who don’t seek to devour the planet and its other inhabitants entirely for our own benefit.
Badgers are meant to be protected, and we need all of us to be protected from theories of illness and how society works that are unconnected to reality.