RIP, Brock the Badger!

At long last the Government has decided to bite the bullet (an apt expression in the circumstances) and authorise the culling of badgers.

 

I had expected the animal rights hooligans and assorted bunny-huggers to be out in force, but their protests have been strangely muted. True there has been a line-up of celebs who don’t have to get a living from the countryside, including the guitarist from a rock-band, a TV luvvie who presents a programme called ‘Springwatch’ (very badly – it is unwatchable, and mostly about him, not the birds and beasties), and that ancient monument David Attenborough.

 

The logic astounds me.

 

Their take is that it is OK to slaughter a fine animal because it has tested TB-positive, even though not showing other signs of actually suffering from the disease, but it is wicked to shoot a badger with bovine TB although it will end its days probably starving to death as it gets weaker.  A domestic pet would be put down to save it further suffering.

 

Leave aside the awful sentimentality, and concentrate on the real issues.

 

Upwards of 25,000 otherwise healthy cattle are slaughtered each year as bovine TB positive. They sometimes include irreplaceable rare breeds. The cost to the tax-payer of this cull is £90,000,000 a year.

 

The badger cull (an animal that few people have seen in the wild because it is nocturnal) will take out 1000 to 3000 over four years in each contaminated area, mostly the rich dairy country of the western counties. Most people would only have seen them as road kill – about 50,000 a year! Although a country boy myself, I have only seen one in the wild, and that was in a bird sanctuary!

 

Doing nothing is not an alternative. Either badgers in ‘at risk’ areas are eliminated or the domestic dairy industry will be decimated.

 

The French, who already flood us with CAP-subsidised milk, would be delighted.