Badger cull

[J-V]

[Anny Road]

How come you know loads of farmers? Unless you are one.

No I'm not one. I have several mates who are farmers.

[Trucker Paddy]

I reckon I cull about 10 a year with the truck

[lifetime fan]

in general the public via supermarkets expect top quality stuff for next to fuck all in price.

 

 

Then they're fucking idiots.

 

Same wankers who'll buy stupidly priced bottled water then complain about the price of milk.

[lifetime fan]

And any farmer who wants a cull in badgers before raising their water troughs is just a lazy twat.

[Paulie Dangerously]

If I remember rightly from Animals of Farthing Wood badger was old and boring. Fuck em

[Ezekiel 25:17]

30 years on and I've still yet to see a badger, use a Badger for any self gaining purposes or see anyone have one for a pet. They serve no purpose whatsoever so the only real probelm I have is why they're going all half a job jack about it and not doing in the lot of them.

[Paulie Dangerously]

[Pony Princess]

The last badger I seen was during the big freeze a few years back. I'd go for a walk on my lunch and my path would take me past this dead badger. It had clearly been hit by a car, waddled to the side of the road and croaked it. We (those who did this lunchtime walk) named him Corpsey.

 

He was frozen stuff and looked quite peaceful. But as the spring warmth arrived and old man winter retreated for another year, Corpsey defrosted and quickly became floppy and putrid until he was just a pile of withered skin, fur and bones.

 

I'd hoped I could eventually in the summer collect the sun-bleached badger skull as that would be rather awesome to have as an ornament or perhaps to dangle from a piece of string during Halloween... but I left that job before Corpsey's lovely badger skull could be acquired.

 

Nini sweet prince ynwa xxoxox

[md1892]

The only poor farmers are either shit ones or welsh hill farmers. This culling thing is bullshit as someone said earlier its like using a sledghammer to crack a nut. The subsidies received from the EU to farmers are huge. Why not spend some of that a little better. Most of the fuckers just like killing things.

 

source:grew up in a farming community , with a badger set in the garden

[Sugar Ape]

BBC News - Badger cull: Government to delay scheme until next year

The government has announced it will delay a planned cull of badgers in England until next summer, after widespread protests against the scheme.

 

Environment Secretary Owen Paterson said this was necessary to "get it right" and the "optimal time" for this year had passed.

 

Under the coalition's plans, several thousand badgers could be shot by trained marksmen, in an effort to reduce levels of bovine tuberculosis.

 

Opponents say this is unnecessary.

 

Ministers have given approval for a cull in two areas, Gloucestershire and west Somerset, as part of efforts to control bovine TB.

 

Under the plans, badgers will be shot in the open without first being trapped in cages, which is current practice.

 

Opponents, including the RSPCA, say that is inhumane. An e-petition to the government, created by Queen guitarist Brian May, has attracted more than 160,000 signatures.

'Convinced'

 

In a statement to MPs, Mr Paterson said the cull "should have begun" earlier this summer but had been delayed until after the Olympics and Paralympics, with recent bad weather also hampering preparations.

 

But he said that the alternative - a vaccine - was only 50% to 60% effective, adding: "I'm entirely convinced that the badger cull is the right thing to do."

 

The NFU is leading the preparations for the scheme, but Mr Paterson said it had written to him, asking for a delay, as this was not the best time of year to go ahead.

 

But he said: "It's crucial that we get this right."

 

The government's plan is based on the results of a nine-year trial which showed the spread of the disease could be slowed slightly if more than 70% of badgers in an area could be eradicated. But if it was less than 70%, the spread of TB could increase, it found.

[Sugar Ape]

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/oct/07/badger-cull-bovine-tb

 

The controversial badger cull in England has failed to kill even half the minimum number of animals needed to ensure tuberculosis in cattle is curbed, sources have told the Guardian. Scientists say the failure may well result in more rather than fewer bovine TB infections, while cull opponents are calling for an immediate end to the "botched" policy.

The first six-week cull began in Somerset on 26 August and is due to end on Tuesday. But Paul Caruana, field manager for the government's decade-long culling trial that ended in 2006, said it had failed to reach the target of 2,100. "They have killed 750-800 badgers [in Somerset] as of Friday evening, and things were slowing down," he told the Guardian. Caruana no longer works for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) but was involved in the latter stages of the Somerset cull.

"Three weeks ago they hit the panic button and contacted people to try to get the show back on the road," said Caruana, who supports targeted culling. After being contacted, he helped deploy cages in Somerset to trap badgers and therefore make them easier to shoot. He said cage-trapping had a "big impact" on the numbers killed and the total would have been even lower without it: "It would have been a total disaster."

An unofficial source within Defra close to the cull confirmed that the night-time shoots have killed fewer than half the target of 2,100 badgers. The official report on the outcome of the culls, which will be scrutinised by an independent panel, is not expected for many weeks.

The culls in Somerset and Gloucestershire (the latter ends next week) were intended to demonstrate that shooting free-running badgers at night could kill sufficient numbers and do so humanely. The previous decade-long randomised badger culling trial (RBCT) used only cage-trapping and shooting, but this is a far more labour-intensive and expensive technique and was rejected as the sole method by ministers in the new culls.

Killing a high number of badgers – over 70% – is crucial because the RBCT showed that low kill rates can drive up TB infections in cattle as fleeing badgers spread the disease more widely, a phenomenon called perturbation.

Professor Rosie Woodroffe, a badger expert at the Zoological Society of London and a key member of the RBCT team, told the Guardian: "If the [somerset] badger population estimates are correct, then culling 800 badgers would be in the region where I would expect cattle TB incidence to be elevated rather than reduced by culling." Earlier work by Woodroffe showed large uncertainties in the estimates of the initial badger populations, on which the minimum cull target was based.

Wildlife disease expert Chris Cheeseman, also a member of the RBCT, said: "If the 750-800 numbers are correct, then I would expect the perturbation effect to be marked. It would be utterly stupid to roll this cull out as a policy. I would expect environment secretary Owen Paterson to try some other means of culling, but that will take time to develop. What a farce." An unofficial Defra source said Paterson had been repeatedly warned of the risk of failure by officials: "It is hard to feel sorry for him, as this is a spectacular own goal."

A spokesman for Defra said the department would not comment on operational matters related to the cull. "All information will be made public after the end of the pilot badger culls," he said. The National Farmers Union, which represents those conducting the cull, declined to comment.

Farming minister David Heath was sacked in Monday's reshuffle.

The outgoing shadow environment secretary, Mary Creagh, said: "Scientists have warned that a botched cull is worse than no cull at all. We are now facing the worst case scenario: badgers have been killed, TB in cattle may well get worse and we are no closer to tackling this terrible disease. Ministers have to lift the veil of secrecy and come clean on what is actually happening."

Dozens of scientific experts warned in 2012 that the badger culls are a "costly distraction", and cull opponents argue that vaccination of cattle and badgers along with stricter controls on cattle movements are a better strategy for controlling bovine TB. The disease, which is on the rise, led to 28,000 cattle being slaughtered in 2012 at a cost of £100m to taxpayers. Ministers argue a cull is a necessary part of an eradication strategy that encompasses all approaches.

The badger culls have prompted the biggest animal rights campaign since the ban on fox hunting with dogs. "This news confirms that free shooting of badgers simply cannot be used as a method of controlling bovine TB," said David Bowles, the RSPCA's head of external affairs. "However, the government should ensure that they don't use this as an excuse to employ other inhumane methods such as gassing."

Jeff Hayden, of the Badger Trust, said: "Apart from the financial cost, it has also divided communities, and in some cases, families. Almost certainly there will be perturbation and some farmers, who otherwise would have been safe, will be suffering herd breakdowns."

Wendy Higgins, at the Humane Society, said: "It's clear now that every aspect of this badger cull catastrophe has unravelled. As the guns fall silent in Somerset we urge Defra to call off the cull."

 

 

 

[Rico1304]

KILL THEM, KILL THEM ALL. The garden destroying little fuckers.

[dennis tooth]

From mammoths to bears to wolves to badgers, man wont be happy till every last creature is eradicated, apart from the ones we can fence off and commodotise.

Its taken a few hundred years of colonialism but finally Africa has caught on now that china has learned.

 

Wont be long soon it will be a fly cull cos thats all that will be left, ourselves excepted. Cue groups of men blowing flies brains out with pump action shotguns.

 

"Them fucking dodo's are looking at my chickens funny, they're upto summat, only I get to kill the chickens"

 

''BOOM''

[General Dryness]

From mammoths to bears to wolves to badgers, man wont be happy till every last creature is eradicated, apart from the ones we can fence off and commodotise.

Its taken a few hundred years of colonialism but finally Africa has caught on now that china has learned.

 

Wont be long soon it will be a fly cull cos thats all that will be left, ourselves excepted. Cue groups of men blowing flies brains out with pump action shotguns.

 

"Them fucking dodo's are looking at my chickens funny, they're upto summat, only I get to kill the chickens"

 

''BOOM''

 

The one that pisses me off is the Stellers Sea Cow. Would have loved to have seen one of them big buggers close up. Think manatee but thirty feet long. Big, friendly, harmless seaweed-chewing monsters. And humans ate them all.

 

See also Haast's Eagle and the Moa. A thirty pound eagle with a 10 foot wingspan that preyed on a 12 foot tall flightless bird, both endemic to New Zealand. At least it did until the maoris turned up in the 12th century and ate all the moas. Bye bye moa, bye bye Haasts eagle.

 

Humanity - wiping shit out since a long time ago.

[Lee909]

They are fighting back

 

[Fugitive]

Won't be long until cunts on horses are culling them with dogs.

[General Dryness]

Won't be long until cunts on horses are culling them with dogs.

 

To counter this, we need to put the badgers on rhinos with packs of tigers.

 

Each unit of badger cavalry to be led by a honey badger.

[VladimirIlyich]

Ive poked my stick into a few Badgers nests (setts) in my time! Huzzar.

[lifetime fan]

So they couldn't work out the number of badgers, couldn't shoot enough, had to trap some in cages to shoot them and scientists warn the cull could actually have caused an increase in TB.

 

So the plan is to ask for longer to pointlessly shoot more badgers.

 

Great idea.

[Sugar Ape]

So they couldn't work out the number of badgers, couldn't shoot enough, had to trap some in cages to shoot them and scientists warn the cull could actually have caused an increase in TB.

 

 

Yeah, that's about right. Everyone knew this would be the outcome but they still want to persist with it.

[Rico1304]

Putting my personal crusade against one badger sett aside it's a weird one for me. Both sides have experts that say it will or won't work, so to a non-scientist like me it seems the best thing to do is test it. Obviously that's outrageous to the 'no' campaigners and they disrupt the tests meaning that they undermine the results making them useless and we are no further on.

 

I listened to an Any Questions the other week and the president of the NFU had me convinced it was a necessity, but then a program later in the week had me the other way.

 

One thing I do find strange is how people can be totally against the killing of one animal, but not others. Badgers have good PR I suppose and look cute.

[VladimirIlyich]

Putting my personal crusade against one badger sett aside it's a weird one for me. Both sides have experts that say it will or won't work, so to a non-scientist like me it seems the best thing to do is test it. Obviously that's outrageous to the 'no' campaigners and they disrupt the tests meaning that they undermine the results making them useless and we are no further on.

 

I listened to an Any Questions the other week and the president of the NFU had me convinced it was a necessity, but then a program later in the week had me the other way.

 

One thing I do find strange is how people can be totally against the killing of one animal, but not others. Badgers have good PR I suppose and look cute.

Maybe its just that they are an essential part of the natural habitat and serve their purpose somewhere along the food chain? They may also have existed as long as or longer than humans? This goes for Foxes too in my view.

 

I'm sure a naturalist could explain it better but everything has its place in the order of things. How have Badgers got TB, was it from humans?

 

Sent from Beyond The Grave Using a Die Phone

 

 

[Rico1304]

Maybe its just that they are an essential part of the natural habitat and serve their purpose somewhere along the food chain? They may also have existed as long as or longer than humans? This goes for Foxes too in my view.

 

I'm sure a naturalist could explain it better but everything has its place in the order of things. How have Badgers got TB, was it from humans?

 

Sent from Beyond The Grave Using a Die Phone

One of the points the NFU bloke made was exactly that, badgers don't have any natural predators any more so there numbers have exploded. Up from 100k to 350k (I think). I think it's bovine TB that the badgers pass on, not the human strain.

[Stickman]

I'm more than happy to jump on the save the badgers bandwagon but only if we can cull off Brian May first....

 

oh and his missus too while we're at it.