It is not good policy, just cheap politics
Guardian - Friday July 14, 2000
by Geoffrey Gibbs
The two men looked nervous and
uneasy. Dressed in combat style clothes and carrying a shovel they
came down the steep hillside to the Land Rover parked in the
narrow Cornish lane . They had just finished digging in badger
traps amid the blackthorn and brambles of a field. The traps were
part of the controversial government experiment to establish the
source of TB in cattle.
The cull has provoked strong
feelings in the area, with protesters claiming that hundreds of
traps have been destroyed since the West Penwith experiment began
while at least one farmer in the area has changed his mind about
taking part in the trials. Simon Cargeeg, 47, who farms 180 acres
at Botallack, said that although no threats had been made, the
presence of around 30 demonstrators outside the farm was
intimidating.
"They seemed pretty intent on
not letting this happen and I don't need the aggro. I have a young
family and I suppose I felt intimidated by the presence of a large
number of very angry people." Police said protesters' claims
about the number of traps destroyed were probably correct. But
they had so far received only a handful of complaints about theft
or criminal damage to Ministry of Agriculture property.
West Penwith farmers have been
divided about the cull. Some private landowners have refused to
allow traps to be laid on their land and more than half of
National Trust tenant farmers in the neighbourhood are said to
have declined to take part.
The artist Kurt Jackson, who has a
smallholding near St Just, is among those who have refused.
"It's partly a moral thing," he said. "Thousands of
badgers are killed on the road every year so why can't they be
examined to test for the incidence of TB?" Despite the
reservations of some farmers, the National Farmers' Union is keen
to see a speeding up of the trials because of concern about the
continued rise of TB in cattle. Cornwall, it says, has a greater
problem with the disease than any other county.
Robert Knowles, chairman of the
Cornwall NFU, who farms 350 acres, is among those in favour of the
trial. Although his own dairy herd of 170 cattle shows no sign of
TB he knows of neighbouring farmers who are under restriction and
unable to move cattle off their farms because they have been
diagnosed with the disease. "If we are going to prove whether
badgers give TB to cattle an experiment like this has got to be
done."
John Maule, 43, who runs a 20 acre organic
smallholding at Leswidden, near St Just, disagrees. He has refused
to allow the cull on his land. "We have never had TB in our
cattle which is part of my worry. If you have not got TB you have
probably got a healthy population of badgers because they are
territorial and keep out the infected ones. "If you kill all
the healthy badgers the sett will become repopulated, usually by
unhealthy ones that have been kicked out from other setts."
"My other gripe is that it is just cheap politics. What
happens if they find out that badgers do cause bovine TB? Is the
next step to kill every badger in the country? That is not going
to be politically acceptable. "They should develop a vaccine
for TB in cows and look at the welfare conditions in which they
are kept because very few organic farmers get TB in their cattle
and they are more stringent on welfare."
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