British badger killing ‘a shambles’

This video is called UK wild badgers at the sett (Meles meles).

From Wildlife Extra:

Badger cull a shambles according to Conservation charity – DEFRA denies

Somerset badger cull

September 2013. Following the revelation in the Western Morning News that shooters involved in the badger cull in Somerset are failing to kill anything like the numbers of badgers required to fulfil their quotas, Mark Jones, veterinarian and Executive Director of Humane Society International/UK gave the following reaction:

“It comes as no surprise that the badger cull is failing in its efforts to devastate badger populations in the pilot areas. This unjustified policy has been a shambles from the outset. It deeply saddens me that even one badger has to suffer and die for the sake of political expediency. The government should have rejected this policy from the start, and instead focused on more progressive, humane, and science-based solutions to the problem of TB in cattle. Now it must abandon this travesty that has already cost farmers and the taxpayer dear and caused deep divisions within our communities.”

DEFRA breach on information

DEFRA is also in breach of a legally binding decision of the Information Commissioner, who ordered DEFRA to release information to HSI UK on exactly how ‘humaneness’ was to be measured and assessed during the pilot culls. The legally binding deadlines for DEFRA to release the information, or appeal the decision, have both passed, but as yet no appeal has been lodged and HSI UK has received no further information.

Cycnical tactics from DEFRA

Mark Jones stated: “DEFRA has used every cynical tactic in the book to prevent disclosure of the methods and criteria it will use to assess humaneness in the pilot culls. We can only assume it knows that independent scrutiny would find the methodology to be full of holes in exactly the same way that eminent scientists have declared the cull to be nothing more than a ‘costly distraction’.

The vast majority of shooting appears to be taking place without any monitoring whatsoever, only a fraction of badger carcasses are being collected for examination, the extreme suffering of wounded badgers who will die slowly underground is unmeasurable and nobody outside of DEFRA’s internal team has been allowed to examine or question its methods. With this level of unjustified animal suffering, DEFRA must not be allowed to stick two fingers up at transparency and get away with it.”

A comment on this by Kevin Coleman, 14 September 2013, 06:40:38:

Badger Culling is simply lip service to the farmers

The government keeps insisting that it is basing all its decisions on scientific evidence. Yet every time they concoct some new solution to some perceived problem they ignore the scientific evidence. Instead they follow a course of action which belies all common sense and reason. Certainly not scientific in the least.

They have done the same with neonicotinoids recently. Despite the lack of evidence from their own scientists they still side with the corporations evidence which is deeply flawed. Meanwhile there are a raft of world renowned scientists presenting evidence that says neonicotinoids are killing the insects.

In a nut shell they are not a government of the people, for the people. They are a corporatist government. Only problem I have now is working out quite what they stand to achieve by this meaningless and cruel slaughter of one of our most iconic mammals. Farmers votes come the next election perhaps?

Either way they are no longer fit for purpose as a governent and need culling themselves. Morally, ethically and scientifically bankrupt is a more fitting description.