Don't Slaughter Badgers, Vaccinate Them.

The British Government seems determined to continue with the badger cull in England during 2015, potentially starting as early as June 1st, which will mean that cubs will also be in the firing line this year. This is despite the cull failing to meet its targets for each of the previous two years and being branded as both ineffective and inhumane by independent monitors – the services of whom the government has now elected to dispense with.

Even if the cull were meeting its targets, the government’s own figures suggest that it would provide only a 16% drop in cases of bovine tuberculosis (bTB) in cattle, requiring ten years of culling to reach that point.

And the culling of badgers actually holds the risk of spreading bTB through the process of perturbation, where the loss of a dominant animal can cause disruption to the whole set, with surviving badgers moving out to find new territories.

In comparison, the policy of vaccination, currently being carried out in Wales, in combination with stringent monitoring of cattle health and inter-herd movement, introduced in 2012 has seen a decrease of almost 30% of cases in just three years.

Vaccination has been criticised for not being wholly effective but research has shown that even if only a third of resident badgers are immunised the risk of transmission to cattle is greatly reduced and subsequent generations of badgers are less likely to carry the disease.

The government in England have said that they will vaccinate around the edges of cull zones in order to counter the effects of perturbation. They recognise the potential effectiveness of vaccinating. So why not simply vaccinate in the first place?

Vaccination does not carry the risk of perturbation. Vaccination does not cause the divisive controversy that the cull has generated. Vaccination does not require policing or the use of high powered firearms in our countryside. And it works.

Liz Truss, the Environment Minister, has said that the government needs to employ every tool in the tool box in the fight against bTB. Surely it makes more sense to employ the RIGHT tool for the job? The figures speak for themselves. The combination of cattle monitoring, controls on herd movement and vaccination have already far exceeded the expected benefits of culling. The unnecessary slaughter of badgers to curb bTB is like using a power sander to clean up an ancient mosaic – atrociously destructive and completely failing to achieve the desired ends.

Please sign the petition to support vaccination over the cruel and wholly unnecessary ending of these animal’s lives.

Thank you,
Neil