It is quite wrong for Geoffrey Lean to give the impression (Gunning for the badger cull, December 17 2011) that the pilot cull of badgers in the fight against TB will be an uncontrolled exercise, involving farmers “blazing away” at badgers as “they run free at night”.
Badger controls will be carried out by trained and experienced contractors operating on behalf of the farmers in each pilot area. So far from being less effective than the culling trials carried out a decade ago, these are required to be considerably more thorough and arguably more humane.
In all areas where licence applications are being prepared the farmers are convinced that the proposed culls, properly carried out, will achieve a reduction of disease of far more than the 16 per cent which the Independent Science Group has postulated. And as the people who will be paying for this exercise, their opinion deserves to be taken seriously.
The model of badger controls which the farming community has been left with by a combination of scientific advice and bureaucratic inflexibility may be far from ideal but it is the only one available. If we are to make a start on ridding the countryside of this pernicious disease for the benefit of farmers, cattle and healthy badgers, we have to do everything we can to make it work.
Martin Haworth
NFU Director of Policy
Agriculture House
Stoneleigh Park
Warwickshire
CV8 2TZ
02476 858 686
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