28/04/2011

Campaigners against Wales’ proposed badger cull, set to begin in the ‘intensive action area’ as early as May, claim to have uncovered omissions and misleading statements in a speech by the Rural Affairs Minister in the Welsh Assembly.image expired

The campaigners say that Elin Jones’ mention of the number of herds affected in the area covered by the culling order was misleading, as, although the number of infected herds had increased by 44 percent, the number of individual cattle from those herds slaughtered was halved from 1725 in 2008 to 850 in 2010. They point out that this fall in infections follows the imposition of stringent cattle measures and that it was achieved without any badgers being culled. The campaign group Pembrokeshire Against the Cull obtained the unpublished figures under the Freedom of Information Act, they were then published by the Badger Trust.

Jones also told the Senedd in March only that there were 79 new TB breakdowns last year compared with 55 in 2009. She went on to mention total compensation paid, without explaining that compensation is for animals, not herds. The Badger Trust has stated that on this basis compensation bill for the Intensive Action Area (IAA) could have been reduced by up to half over the period.

The two groups have also accused the minister of failing to include details of the responses to her official consultation when the Minister made the decision to allow a cull to go ahead. Of the 13,000 responses to the consultation, four times as many were against killing badgers in the IAA as were in favour of a cull. The Trust announced in a press release that despite this figure, the Minister said, “After full consideration of the evidence presented to me, including consideration of the responses to the recent Consultation on Badger Control in the Intensive Action Area, I have reached the decision to proceed with legislation which would enable a government-led cull of badgers in the Intensive Action Area”.

The Badger Control Order came into force on 31 March this year; as the trial cull looms ever nearer in Wales’ Intensive Action Area, which covers parts of Pembrokeshire, Ceredigion and Carmarthenshire, groups opposed to culling have increased the intensity of their activities in an effort to prevent it from taking place.