09-03-2010 Animals Count at badger rally in Cardiff

On 8th March, Lorraine Parker from Cardiff, represented Animals Count at a badger rally outside the Senedd. The protesters urged the Welsh Assembly not to go ahead with next month’s planned badger cull in Pembrokeshire.

Lorraine has represented Animals Count at several meetings in Wales, written to AMs to call for a humane solution to the TB problem and asked them to follow the example set by England, which ruled out badger culling. Lorraine has also referred to the 2007 report by the Independent Scientific Group (ISG), which found that: “while badgers are clearly a source of cattle TB, careful evaluation of our own and others’ data indicates that badger culling can make no meaningful contribution to cattle TB control in Britain. Indeed, some policies under consideration are likely to make matters worse rather than better.”

And it concluded that “scientific findings indicate that the rising incidence of disease can be reversed, and geographical spread contained, by the rigid application of cattle-based control measures alone.”

Culling badgers is cruel, ineffective and flouts scientific evidence. Animals Count urges the Welsh Assembly to use improved cattle-based measures to control TB. Reducing the number of dairy cattle is another inevitable measure during a time when the demand for dairy is falling and more and more farmers are struggling to make ends meet anyway. Funding should be redirected away from the livestock industry into arable agriculture or other sectors ex-farmers would like to move into.

Click here to read our July 2009 response to the public consultation on the badger cull and here for Animals Count news from 2007-2009.