England has continued to issue permits allowing people to kill badgers to protect cattle from disease, despite local extinctions and scientific evidence stating that badger culling is not the best way to protect bovines. What’s happening?

The Guardian reported that it accessed leaked documents showing that England’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs issued 17 new licenses in June that allow people to kill badgers. The publication explains that badger culling has been used in the country for years to stop the spread of bovine tuberculosis to cattle and has led to local extinctions.

However, scientific reports have shown that culling badgers is not the most effective way to stop the spread of this disease, and DEFRA’s decision overrules the advice of its own scientific adviser, Peter Brotherton, director of science for Natural England.

  • @[email protected]
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    14 months ago

    Statistically it is much worse. Hunting for fun is liscensed and controlled very rigorously, while similar protections are not in place when dealing with farm animals.

    • @sazey
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      4 months ago

      but my morals only allow me to care for photogenic farm animals, not those pesky nasty vermin that are exterminated by the tens of thousands in order to plant hectares of mostly nutritionally useless soy monocrop, all so I can follow a diet that will lead to me looking like a Holocaust victim.

      • @[email protected]
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        24 months ago

        A lot of those crops are fed to meat animals. Wildlife dies. Animals in industrial units die. Vegans get too thin and die. Meat eaters get too fat and die.

        Cats inherit the earth.

        • @sazey
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          14 months ago

          Everything shits, everything dies. I love it.