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Stop the Badger Cull

As a patron of The Badger Trust and Naturewatch Pollyanna is backing calls by both organistaions to prevent the to stop the proposed badger cull and to implement instead the more sustainable and humane solution of vaccination, improved testing and better biosecurity.

The Pollyanna Pickering Foundation has also added it’s support to Team Badger a campaign launched by Queen guitarist Brian May to stop the “indefensible” cull of badgers which has been given the go-ahead to tackle tuberculosis in cattle.

The team is made up of a coalition of animal welfare groups- including IFAW, Born Free and The Badger Trust, (of which Pollyanna is also a patron) which aims to raise public awareness and collect signatures on a government petition to force a debate on badger culling in Parliament. At the end of October the Government announced that the controversial cull would be postponed – although only until next June.

As many as 3,000 badgers could be shot during the first cull, which some farmers say is necessary because the wild animal spreads the disease to livestock. At the launch Team Badger May said he became involved with the issue because every badger was a “thinking, feeling being” and warned: “Badgers are under this immediate threat.” He called on the public for their help and urged them to sign Team Badger’s petition against the cull. A long-term study found that culling of badgers over a number of years on a large scale could reduce the incidence of TB in cattle herds by 16%. But May said the cull was “scientifically, practically and ethically indefensible and it is against the wishes of the majority of people of this country”. He wants the cull to be abandoned in favour of vaccination, which he believes is the only long-term hope for eradicating TB in cattle.

The Team Badger campaign also argues that improved biosecurity and stricter controls on the movement of cattle could help eradicate TB. Giving her backing to the project Pollyanna said “some government ministers insist that the cull is ‘science-led’. Unfortunately the reality could not be further from the truth. Bovine TB is a terrible disease that needs to be controlled, however this cull is not the way to do it.”

Click Here to visit The Badger Trust Site
Click Here to Sign the e-petition created by Dr Brian May CBE

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