15 September 2010
The government has set out plans to license farmers in England to shoot badgers on their land, with tens of thousands of animals potentially targeted.
The government believes the badger cull is necessary to curb tuberculosis in cattle.
Cattle TB cost the UK more than £100m last year.
But campaigners who successfully mounted a legal challenge against plans for a cull in Wales say the scientific evidence for culling does not stack up.
The European badger (Meles meles) is a protected species under European and British law, but ministers can sanction killing in certain circumstances, including to tackle diseases.
It is believed the government will change the instructions it gives to Natural England, the statutory agency that issues licences, in order that farmers can gain permission to kill badgers on the basis that they carry the bovine TB bacterium.
The previous Labour government concluded culling did not make scientific or economic sense, and instructed the agency not to issue licences for TB control.
Ministers in the Conservative-Lib Dem coalition, however, believe the latest scientific evidence changes the picture.
Agriculture Minister Jim Paice said before the election that the Conservatives favoured culling. Since coming into office he has several times pledged to make it happen, although his boss, Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman, has been more nuanced, promising only a strategy based on science.
Split vision
Whether science does back a cull or not is a hotly-disputed question.
Some of the scientists who performed the biggest ever investigation into culling - the UK's Randomised Badger Culling Trial (RBCT), also known as the "Krebs Trial" - maintain that it does not.
The Krebs Trial found that the incidence of TB fell in cattle herds inside the culling zone, but rose outside, probably because killing badgers disrupted the animals' social structures, making them range further and along less ordered trails in search of food and territory, bringing them into contact with more cattle.
The team concluded at that time that culling could not be an ingredient of an effective bovine TB control programme; and some of them, at least, say that is still the case.
However, other observers point out that in the four years since the Krebs trial concluded, the "perturbation effect" has fallen away while some benefit appears to persist inside the culled zone.
Two months ago, the Court of Appeal upheld an appeal by the Badger Trust against the Welsh Assembly Government's plans for a trial cull in Pembrokeshire.
One of the reasons for the judgement was that proponents expected the measure to produce only a 9% decline in TB in cattle, which the court ruled was not a "substantial reduction", as required by the Animal Health Act.
Defra is using different legislation, the Protection of Badgers Act. Even so, campaigners are expected to explore legal options if they do not think the law is being properly applied.
"The Badger Trust is monitoring things very closely and we hope [Defra] will take a considered view of the science that is overwhelmingly against culling," said Gwendolen Morgan of Bindmans solicitors, the organisation's legal advisor.
The government's consultation is expected to last for three months.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11303939
(Submitted by Dawn Holloway)
Showing posts with label badger trust. Show all posts
Showing posts with label badger trust. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Badger cull plans for England being unveiled
15 September 2010
The government has set out plans to license farmers in England to shoot badgers on their land, with tens of thousands of animals potentially targeted.
The government believes the badger cull is necessary to curb tuberculosis in cattle.
Cattle TB cost the UK more than £100m last year.
But campaigners who successfully mounted a legal challenge against plans for a cull in Wales say the scientific evidence for culling does not stack up.
The European badger (Meles meles) is a protected species under European and British law, but ministers can sanction killing in certain circumstances, including to tackle diseases.
It is believed the government will change the instructions it gives to Natural England, the statutory agency that issues licences, in order that farmers can gain permission to kill badgers on the basis that they carry the bovine TB bacterium.
The previous Labour government concluded culling did not make scientific or economic sense, and instructed the agency not to issue licences for TB control.
Ministers in the Conservative-Lib Dem coalition, however, believe the latest scientific evidence changes the picture.
Agriculture Minister Jim Paice said before the election that the Conservatives favoured culling. Since coming into office he has several times pledged to make it happen, although his boss, Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman, has been more nuanced, promising only a strategy based on science.
Split vision
Whether science does back a cull or not is a hotly-disputed question.
Some of the scientists who performed the biggest ever investigation into culling - the UK's Randomised Badger Culling Trial (RBCT), also known as the "Krebs Trial" - maintain that it does not.
The Krebs Trial found that the incidence of TB fell in cattle herds inside the culling zone, but rose outside, probably because killing badgers disrupted the animals' social structures, making them range further and along less ordered trails in search of food and territory, bringing them into contact with more cattle.
The team concluded at that time that culling could not be an ingredient of an effective bovine TB control programme; and some of them, at least, say that is still the case.
However, other observers point out that in the four years since the Krebs trial concluded, the "perturbation effect" has fallen away while some benefit appears to persist inside the culled zone.
Two months ago, the Court of Appeal upheld an appeal by the Badger Trust against the Welsh Assembly Government's plans for a trial cull in Pembrokeshire.
One of the reasons for the judgement was that proponents expected the measure to produce only a 9% decline in TB in cattle, which the court ruled was not a "substantial reduction", as required by the Animal Health Act.
Defra is using different legislation, the Protection of Badgers Act. Even so, campaigners are expected to explore legal options if they do not think the law is being properly applied.
"The Badger Trust is monitoring things very closely and we hope [Defra] will take a considered view of the science that is overwhelmingly against culling," said Gwendolen Morgan of Bindmans solicitors, the organisation's legal advisor.
The government's consultation is expected to last for three months.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11303939
(Submitted by Dawn Holloway)
The government has set out plans to license farmers in England to shoot badgers on their land, with tens of thousands of animals potentially targeted.
The government believes the badger cull is necessary to curb tuberculosis in cattle.
Cattle TB cost the UK more than £100m last year.
But campaigners who successfully mounted a legal challenge against plans for a cull in Wales say the scientific evidence for culling does not stack up.
The European badger (Meles meles) is a protected species under European and British law, but ministers can sanction killing in certain circumstances, including to tackle diseases.
It is believed the government will change the instructions it gives to Natural England, the statutory agency that issues licences, in order that farmers can gain permission to kill badgers on the basis that they carry the bovine TB bacterium.
The previous Labour government concluded culling did not make scientific or economic sense, and instructed the agency not to issue licences for TB control.
Ministers in the Conservative-Lib Dem coalition, however, believe the latest scientific evidence changes the picture.
Agriculture Minister Jim Paice said before the election that the Conservatives favoured culling. Since coming into office he has several times pledged to make it happen, although his boss, Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman, has been more nuanced, promising only a strategy based on science.
Split vision
Whether science does back a cull or not is a hotly-disputed question.
Some of the scientists who performed the biggest ever investigation into culling - the UK's Randomised Badger Culling Trial (RBCT), also known as the "Krebs Trial" - maintain that it does not.
The Krebs Trial found that the incidence of TB fell in cattle herds inside the culling zone, but rose outside, probably because killing badgers disrupted the animals' social structures, making them range further and along less ordered trails in search of food and territory, bringing them into contact with more cattle.
The team concluded at that time that culling could not be an ingredient of an effective bovine TB control programme; and some of them, at least, say that is still the case.
However, other observers point out that in the four years since the Krebs trial concluded, the "perturbation effect" has fallen away while some benefit appears to persist inside the culled zone.
Two months ago, the Court of Appeal upheld an appeal by the Badger Trust against the Welsh Assembly Government's plans for a trial cull in Pembrokeshire.
One of the reasons for the judgement was that proponents expected the measure to produce only a 9% decline in TB in cattle, which the court ruled was not a "substantial reduction", as required by the Animal Health Act.
Defra is using different legislation, the Protection of Badgers Act. Even so, campaigners are expected to explore legal options if they do not think the law is being properly applied.
"The Badger Trust is monitoring things very closely and we hope [Defra] will take a considered view of the science that is overwhelmingly against culling," said Gwendolen Morgan of Bindmans solicitors, the organisation's legal advisor.
The government's consultation is expected to last for three months.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11303939
(Submitted by Dawn Holloway)
Monday, June 22, 2009
Study finds "no evidence" that badgers give TB to cattle, says Badger Trust
The Badger Trust strongly challenges claims by the Scottish Agricultural College (SAC) that "TB could be passed from badgers to cattle" through contact between cattle and badgers in the field[1].In a paper in an online journal [2], researchers explain how they used data logging equipment to record what they call "contact initiation" between cattle and badgers. On publication, lead researcher Mike Hutchings claimed in a resulting SAC press release that this contact is "a potentially significant area of disease transmission between the species".
But David Williams, chairman of Badger Trust, dismissed the claims: "The idea that badgers 'initiate contact' with cattle is just ludicrous. These claims are absurd and are not even supported by the researchers' own data. Their data loggers recorded a so-called 'contact' when badgers were around two metres away from cattle. That's hardly 'contact': the badgers could have been on the other side of a hedge. And the researchers have conspicuously failed to explain how a badger, whose nose is just a few centimetres off the ground, could transmit bovine TB to a cow that is almost two metres tall and two metres away.
"Around half of all so-called 'contacts' were for barely a second and the researchers even admit that this so-called 'contact' was 'relatively infrequent'. Indeed, over six months less than half the cattle were anywhere near a badger.
"Of course, the study found that cattle are constantly close to one another, even though the equipment was turned down to intentionally minimise the number of cattle to cattle contacts that were recorded.
Cattle to cattle - both within herds and between herds - is the obvious way in which bovine TB is spread and maintained and this study provides ample evidence for that transmission route.
"The only interesting finding of this study, which confirms the well documented territorial behaviour of badgers, is that neighbouring social groups of badgers almost never came anywhere near one another.
This scotches the view promulgated by farming unions that bovine TB is spread between badger social groups rather than from herd to herd.
"This study simply confirms that cattle to cattle is the most likely route of bovine TB transmission and it provides no firm evidence that a single badger was ever close enough to cattle to infect them with bovine TB."
1. http://www.sac.ac.uk/news/currentnews/09n19badgerscows
2. http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0005016
For further comment, contact David Williams on 07768 518064
Badger Trust
1. http://www.sac.ac.uk/news/currentnews/09n19badgerscows
2. http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0005016
For further comment, contact David Williams on 07768 518064
Badger Trust
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