Badger Culling
Debate between Angela Smith and Roger Gale(7 years, 8 months ago)
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Sir Roger Gale
I am afraid that the BVA is a faith of many churches. To some extent, it probably depends on which veterinary surgeons people listen to.
Angela Smith
I, too, am an honorary life member of the BVA. The BVA has made it clear that it does not support the free shooting of badgers, because it is inhumane, as was proved by the independent expert panel. As things stand, the BVA is not particularly happy with how the culling is being conducted.
Sir Roger Gale
There is an attitude that we have to use every shot—unfortunately literally in this case—in the locker, and I believe that we are going down the wrong path. I say that with no pleasure whatsoever. If culling worked and eliminated TB in badgers and cattle, I could probably live with the fact that it was necessary, because in the long run it would be the kindest thing to do. But we do not know how many of the 15,000 slaughtered badgers have even had TB, because they have not been tested. Where is the science in that? We do not know whether cattle are giving TB to badgers or badgers are giving it to cattle, or both, because that has not been proven.
I accept that vaccination is costly and difficult, but it is nothing like as costly and difficult as shooting badgers. We know that in Wales, where vaccination has been used much more widely—again, let us discount the wilder claims of success and say that that has probably had a 20% to 25% success rate—culling, at best, has had a 4% success rate. If the Minister has other figures and can demonstrate conclusively that the facts are otherwise, I would be very interested to hear them. So far, we seem to be a little short on statistics giving any indication that the policy that we are currently pursuing works. I want a policy that works. Whichever side of this argument we are on, I guess we are all on the side of wildlife and farmers, and everybody in the Chamber wants a policy that works.
The Republic of Ireland has developed what it believes will be an efficacious vaccine. The bottom line is that we are all looking for that, and I want to see us go down that road. Instead of wasting more time, money and effort going down a blind alley—pursuing a policy that does not work, has not worked and will not work—if we put all those resources and all our effort into finding a vaccination that works for cattle and badgers, we can solve the problem. I urge the Minister to take that away and think about it again. I am not saying that he has not thought about this issue—patently he has; he probably goes to sleep at night dreaming about it—but we need a solution that works.
Two things have not been pursued: one is vaccination, which I have mentioned; and the other, which others have mentioned, is proper ecological bio-control of the movement of cattle and of livestock generally. We know that works because we tried it during the last pandemic, so instead of messing around at the margins, let us get this right.