A UK Conservative MP has said “all wild animals” should be culled in response to conservation groups calling for an end to the badger cull.
Richard Drax, MP for South Dorset, made the comments at a debate on farming in the House of Commons. He said that culling badgers has been proven to help stop the spread of bovine tuberculosis (bTB) between farmed cows.
“Can I suggest that rather than talking about stopping culling on badgers and to introduce some other form, that all wild animals have to be culled,” he said. According to Drax, this is because animals such as deer and foxes have no natural predators in the UK, causing their health to “deteriorate.” He added: “We don’t want to wipe them out, we just simply want them controlled.”
More than 210,000 badgers have been killed since the cull began in England in 2013, according to the Badger Trust. The Badger Trust says the cull has not been effective in containing bTB, but the government disputes this.
If cows are used for conservation grazing, isn’t the problem of them getting TB non existent? The problem is people catching TB from cows through milk and close contact, not cows catching TB from badgers.
Theoretically. And if we abolished farming of cows. Sure that might be possible.
But logically 2 issues.
1 ) current laws require cow herd owners to test for TB if it is discovered in the area. And destroy the whole herd if one is found.
Cows still represent a cost to keep. So all those farmers will also tend to sell dairy to help fund the conservation land.
This also leads to the question that in some future where vegan laws or will prevents farming cows. How will motivation to fund keeping healthy cows be handled.
It’s probably not too great for the cows themselves, but yes, it wouldn’t be an issue for people.
However, the original point was the suggestion that cattle could be kept separate from badgers, and my response was just concerning the difficulty with that - no matter what the circumstances.