PLANS TO cull 1,500 badgers in Wales to cut down rising tuberculosis rates in cattle, which have been strongly backed by farming organisations but opposed by animal rights bodies, have been blocked by the Court of Appeal in London.
Under the plan, badgers inside an infected zone in north Pembrokeshire and neighbouring parts of Carmarthenshire and Ceredigion would have been killed, but the order agreed by the Welsh Assembly Government would have allowed culling to have taken place anywhere in Wales.
The Welsh authorities were wrong, said Lord Justice Pill when he delivered the three-judge ruling yesterday, in making an order for all of Wales when the evidence only existed to indicate that a cull would reduce TB rates in the three districts.
Nearly 42 per cent of all farms in the affected areas have had TB reactor cattle over the last six years and Welsh minister for rural affairs, Elin Jones insisted that the blame lay at the door of “a bovine TB reservoir” in badgers in TB-endemic areas in Wales.
“It is, however, clear that if we don’t tackle all sources of infection we will not eradicate it. Farmers, their families and our rural communities are suffering from the devastating consequences of this disease and I remain committed to its eradication,” she said yesterday.
Leaving open the possibility of a final court battle before the Supreme Court, Welsh first minister Carwyn Jones said bovine TB rates are rising: “We will consider the implications of the judgment, but what’s absolutely clear is that we cannot allow a situation to persist where TB increases year on year in Wales.”
The campaign against the cull had been led by the Badger Trust and supported by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and a number of celebrities, including Queen guitarist Brian May, who now lives in Wales.
The Welsh authorities are planning restrictions on cattle movements, but Brian Walters of the Farmers’ Union of Wales said farmers could not be left with extra costs and curbs “which are futile so long as the major wildlife source of the disease continues to infect their cattle”.
The Irish Department of Agriculture and Food, University College, Dublin and the UK Department for the Environment and Rural Affairs are working together on a vaccine for badgers.
Earlier this year, the Department of Agriculture began a three-year field trial which may be expanded to all parts of the Republic if it is found to be successful.