Chief Vet raises doubts over future of Gloucestershire Badger Cull

The day after MPs went home from Parliament for Christmas the government has finally admitted that this year’s Gloucestershire Badger Cull was a failure for the second year running. The cull operators killed just 25% of the maximum number of badgers they intended to kill in this year’s Gloucestershire cull and missed their minimum target by over 340 badgers.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/bovine-tb-summary-of-badger-control-monitoring-during-2014

The government’s own Chief Veterinary Officer, Nigel Gibbens, has now admitted the cull might not lead to the hoped-for reduction of the disease in Gloucestershire and the DEFRA report confirms that the levels of accuracy and humaneness achieved in this year's cull were not significantly improved compared to 2013. The Chief Vet has stated that culling should only continue in Gloucestershire in 2015 if “there are reasonable grounds for confidence that it can be carried out more effectively. “This is because the government’s own figures show that the cull was not significantly more humane or effective than last year.

The cull operators took almost twelve hours to shoot each badger they killed and had to set each trap more than 50 times for each badger they trapped and shot. It beggars belief that the government should even consider continuing with this failed policy when the Welsh government has taken a different route to controlling the disease which does not include culling badgers and which is reaping significant rewards.

GABS will fight on to get this failed policy changed in 2015  for the sake of both badgers and cattle.