Last chance to save the badgers?
More than 1,800 badgers have already been slaughtered since August 2013 as part of the Government's misguided badger culling policy and as many as 100,000 will be under threat if it insists on going ahead with rolling out the cull.
The pilot culls in Somerset and Gloucester failed to meet the 70% 'targets' set by the Government deemed to be necessary to have any chance of reducing bovine TB in cattle and have proved to be an embarrassing catalogue of errors from start to finish.
Just this fortnight it was reported that the Independent Expert Panel (IEP) tasked by the government with evaluating the culling also found the pilots were not just ineffective but inhumane too – with more than five per cent of culled badgers taking longer than five minutes to die.
RSPCA head of public affairs David Bowles said: “The scientific credibility of the Government is at risk and will be undermined unless they to move away from this discredited policy. We urge MPs to recognise that and vote to stop any further roll out of the cull.
“The RSPCA has long campaigned against plans for a widespread badger cull for both scientific and welfare reasons and the failure of the pilot culls simply reinforces our view.. The badger cull is not the answer to the problems of bovine TB in cattle.
“Evidence suggests that Wales saw a 24 per cent drop in new bovine TB cases last year and that was due to vaccination programs and effective biosecurity.”
Notes to Editors:
? The Government can make a decision on rolling the cull out to nearly half England without any further debate in Parliament.
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