Badgers, Stop Blaming Them For Bovine T.B.
I agree with this article! I too, know of a farm where dairy cows live with badgers and the farmer is highly protective of his badger sets. Poor farming is the answer - caused by the British Government putting dairy farmers under far too much stress! What to self-serving, desk bandits in Whitehall, and ponsy students and professors know about animals? Feck all!
Farmers! You badly need a brand new union. The NFU is worse than useless!
"I’ve been a hill farmer for forty years so I know a thing or two
about cattle. I also know quite a bit about badgers because near our
farm in north west Northumberland we have several badger setts in the
valley. Our badgers and the cows in this valley live happily side by
side without incident and without a single case of bovine tuberculosis
in cattle on farms in this area.
The government and the National Farmers Union would have people
believe that the only solution to controlling the devastating scourge of
bTb, is to kill thousands of badgers. I think that’s nonsense. Shooting
badgers is a pointless exercise, a short-term, ineffective,
sticky-plaster on the gaping wound that is bovine tuberculosis.
I
have firsthand experience of bTB, I know the immense emotional and
financial havoc that it brings to hard-working, hard-pressed farmers and
I understand how desperate they are to see something done to make it go
away. But for the government to stubbornly pursue a badger cull when
all the scientific and conservation common sense tells us it simply
won’t work, is ultimately not going to help farmers. And farmers
themselves have got to come to terms with that inconvenient truth.
Jim
Paice, the former DEFRA Minister said that doing nothing was not an
option. Of course not, but doing the wrong thing is even worse. Culling
badgers is very likely to spread bTb to previously uninfected areas.
Badgers are timid creatures who are also socially mobile. The badgers on
our land don’t just stick to their own setts, they move from sett to
sett with a number of satellite setts in between. Badgers under attack
will run beyond their territory and if that happens, we could end up
with a far bigger bTb problem on our hands than ever before.
Killing
badgers is also morally bankrupt because it’s diverting much-needed
funds and energy away from tackling the fundamental root causes of the
TB problem. For as long as this government is obsessed with culling
badgers, it’s not focusing on measures to reduce TB on farms and that’s
where we need to get to grips with it.
My own observation is that
bTb hot-spots tend to be in areas where you have dairy farms with ever
increasing intensification of cattle. Intensive farming methods are
focused on increasing profit by increasing yield from ever more
pressured animals who, inevitably, become more stressed and therefore
more vulnerable to disease.
Intensification of dairy farming in
particular, is a growing problem borne of market pressures. The dairy
sector is already under enormous financial hardship, with farmers
working long hours for decreasing returns. Their solution? Buy more cows
and increase their milk production. It’s a terrible downwards spiral
that leads to poor cattle welfare, low immunity and a disease disaster
waiting to happen.
To truly tackle bTB and other diseases like
mastitis, we need to detensify cattle farming and stop pushing animals
to the very limit. That is precisely what the NFU should be telling
farmers, not helping them on to the badger culling bandwaggon. But the
NFU is little more than a self-serving bureaucracy more interested in
its own survival.
We bought our current farm thirteen years ago
and we’ve done an immense amount of work to enhance and encourage
wildlife and rich biodiversity. We’ve created woodlands and habitats and
in so doing, farmed using methods that are in harmony with nature. On
our farm we run self-catering holiday cottages, embracing eco-tourism
and sharing our passion for wildlife. Our visitors get up close and
personal with nature, even having footage of our badgers and barn owls
streamed live into every cottage. We are living proof that if you treat
the natural world around you with respect and live in balance with
nature, badgers and other wild animals are far from being the enemy,
they are a wonderful delight to be treasured and protected."
