Bovine TB: Culling Trials have been democratically tested and must be allowed to proceed uninterrupted.

South West Landowners have thrown their weight behind farming minister David Heath’s calls for the badger cull pilot schemes to be allowed to go ahead without interruption from individuals or groups who disagree with the policy.

Trials are authorised to start tomorrow (1 June) to test whether shooting offers a humane and efficient option for culling infected badgers and CLA South West Director, John Mortimer, says it is essential that the pilot schemes are allowed to go ahead without disruption in order to get a clear answer to that question.

“These proposals have survived the democratic process, having been debated in Parliament and tested in the courts. The Minister spoke to us at length at this week’s Royal Bath and West Show and he has our unqualified support in calling on people not to attempt to disrupt the trials.

“For too long the debate has been clouded by politics rather than public interest and livestock farmers have been left fighting a disease with both hands tied behind their backs watching some 30,000 cattle - including pregnant heifers and calves - sent for slaughter every year. Now, for the first time in three decades, we have a Government which is prepared to put its head above the parapet and instigate an ongoing programme of control and containment,” he said.

 “Bovine TB is as debilitating a disease for wildlife as it is for cattle and yet the action to combat it has never been equivalent to the scale of the problem. The cost to the public purse will top a billion pounds over ten years but the cost in human terms, the misery and suffering caused to farming families, is immeasurable.”

Mr Mortimer said that on an issue as contentious as Bovine TB control it was inevitable that opinions will be divided - but the fact remained that badgers represent a significant reservoir of Mycobacterium Bovis, the bacterium which causes bovine TB and, where there were infected badgers, there was a TB risk to cattle, camelids and goats.

“In other parts of the world it has been accepted that without controlling the disease in wildlife there is little or no chance of bringing it back under control in farm and domestic animals.

“Everybody accepts that culling is only one part of a variety of measures that will have to be employed to beat this disease and that bio-security, cattle movement controls and, eventually, vaccine will all have a part to play. But there is currently no deployable vaccine which can cure an infected badger and there are no vaccines licensed for use in cattle either to prevent or control bovine TB.”

The Government and the industry had trod a rocky road to get to a point where licences have been issued to hold trial culls.

That has required political bravery and determination and it is now incumbent upon the rest of the population to allow these trials to be conducted in a proper manner because we should be under no illusion, without this action being taken as a matter of urgency we may never catch up with this disease and could find ourselves instead in a situation where livestock farming is unsustainable in our part of the world.”