Badgers get a hammering in the English magazine Country Life. Kill them, they're giving TB to cattle. We've had a lot of this in Ireland, and no doubt, an eradication process (or culling as it is more delicately put) is similarly going on. But there is one interesting fact in the magazine. It is written that in large areas including the West Country the West Midlands and Wales, TB in cattle was almost unknown in the 1970's. Now we here have had almost half a century of an official Bovine T B eradication scheme, and it is certainly not eradicated. Blame the badger for all those years? Blame sloppy farming? Blame deviousness and trickery? It is one of the great failures of Government after Government.
But back to Britain. You may not have noticed that when the Blair Government was elected, it declared a moratorium on badger culling despite the protests of farmers. Anyway, an independent scientific review led by Professor John Krebs has reported that badgers are indeed a "substantive source" of TB in dairy cattle. And the magazine points out that this Government would seem to listen to animal rights groups, which had poured money into its election coffers, but wouldn't listen to farmers on this issue, just as it wouldn't listen on fox-hunting.
And the article claims that since the badger became protected about ten years ago (apart from official culling), its numbers have increased by 80 per cent. In fact, it has become an icon; "Its mysterious nocturnal lifestyle, fancy mint-humbug stripes and starring role in the stories of Beatrix Potter and Kenneth Grahame gives them an almost sacred appeal to millions of wildlife supporters, few familiar with the realities of farming or blessed with easy access to the countryside. "Further, it states, nothing counts, "certainly not farmers livelihoods or welfare, where the life of a badger is at stake".
Now the British Government has accepted the need for large badger culls, and the Professor recommends a five-year plan, dividing the country into 10km blocks on the map. In some, the animals will be eradicated, wiped out. In less affected areas, only when new outbreaks occur will culling take place. In others a moratorium. But, says the magazine, badgers will recolonise where all have been killed. Round and round it goes.
Can anyone prove to, say, the average reader of a newspaper, that the badger gives TB to the cattle, and not deseased cattle give it to the badger? Does it never happen? .