The badger vaccination programme in Wales has been a shambles, says Derek Mead, and he fears farmers in the English edge zones are being conned out of lots of money for a similar programme The news that the badger cull appears to be starting to have an effect in Gloucestershire will be welcomed by every farmer in the country. It will also start to make those who have maintained that culling would make things worse, rather than better, consider whether or not they had better start revising their opinions. But what I am less happy about is the Government vaccination programme for the fringe areas, under which farmers are going to be conned into paying for an operation which has as much chance of failure as it has of success. The programme in Wales has been a shambles and I have seen nothing to persuade me the English one will be better. The whole scheme is full of holes. No one knows for certain, for instance, how far TB-infected badgers have spread. Vaccinating a badger will not cure it. And it is entirely possible that diseased animals have already spread beyond the line government advisors have drawn on the map. This is merely a sop to the pro-badger groups, an attempt by the government to demonstrate that it has more than one tool in its box. What it is all going to cost the taxpayer and the farming community I dread to think, and though it would be one thing to fling money at a scheme guaranteed to succeed, it is entirely another to back one with such long odds. What the government has so far refused to do is to listen to those of us who know there is another way. One that works by identifying setts containing diseased badgers and getting rid of the occupants humanely. That is an approach the pro-badger lobby could only object to if they were prepared to see the animals they claim to want to protect continuing to die from this dreadful disease. Why wont the Government at least authorise a trial? Because, I would suggest, its advisors know it would be 100 per cent effective and cure the bovine TB problem in a fraction of the time other methods promise to do. But that, if you are a Government advisor, is bad news. Because if that happens there wont be any work for you, no cosy little number to keep you occupied. Cynical? Perhaps. But after all my years of seeing how government departments work, I think I have a perfect right to be. Read more: westerndailypress.co.uk/Derek-Mead-TB- badger-culling-starting-work/story-23007208-detail/story.html#ixzz3HwRG5jCm Follow us: @WesternDaily on Twitter | WesternDaily on Facebook
Posted on: Sun, 02 Nov 2014 19:37:03 +0000
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