The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) has welcomed the government’s announcement that it will bring an end to culling badgers to control bovine tuberculosis (TB), instead driving down rates through vaccination.
But the charity is calling for the government to bring an end to the badger cull far earlier than 2029.
Earlier this week, Minister for Food Security and Rural Affairs, Daniel Zeichner said: “Our comprehensive TB eradication package will allow us to end the badger cull by the end of this parliament and stop the spread of this horrific disease.”
However, the RSPCA chief executive Chris Sherwood said the announcement was “really welcome” and would mark “a watershed moment in the fight” against bovine TB.
“We are concerned however, that badgers will still face up to another five years of being needlessly killed in the name of Bovine TB eradication.
“Bovine TB is an issue which is devastating to farming communities.
“While we are fully behind these new measures such as carrying out a badger population survey, analysing badger TB rates and putting more money into cattle and badger vaccinations, we are calling for an immediate halt to new culls and a reduction in badgers allowed to be killed in any of the licensed culls,” Sherwood said.
Over the past decade, 278,000 cattle have been compulsorily slaughtered and over 230,000 badgers have been killed in efforts to control the disease, costing taxpayers more than £100 million every year.
Sherwood said that the RSPCA fears that the population survey of badgers announced “will show depleted numbers of a protected species.
“We can’t wait another five years for that to happen.
“Science has already shown us that a major contributing factor to the spread of this disease is it passing from cow to cow, so solutions are also needed to focus much more on cattle and include more frequent and improved cattle testing, an improved test to identify infected cattle, better management of cattle movements, cattle vaccination and incentives to improve biosecurity in herds.
“Hopefully today’s announcement is a new dawn in the fight against Bovine Tuberculosis and we look forward to contributing to this aim,” the RSPCA chief executive said.
