DEVON farmers are being asked whether they would be willing to take part in a badger cull, if the government sanctions one to try to halt the spread of bovine TB. The NFU and Country Land and Business Association has mailed questionnaires to its members to find out how far farmers are prepared to get involved. The survey results will be sent to Defra before the government consultation period ends next month. Farmers are being asked which culling method they would prefer, trapping, shooting, snaring or gassing. Gassing, the most humane method, would require government permission which would take a year to come through. NFU regional director Anthony Gibson said: 'Until then you're only going to see a fairly localised badger cull, even if authorised by the government.' He said they would want Defra to run any operation, but farmers would need to be involved. 'It is going to be highly controversial. I think we will see a lot of opposition from animal rights activists who will seek to disrupt whatever takes place. There could be serious unrest in the countryside, which we would rather avoid, but something has got to be done to get rid of TB.' He said the long-term answer lies in vaccination, but a badger vaccine is at least a decade away, even longer for a cattle vaccine. 'The idea that the answer is to kill every badger in Devon is barking mad. It would not be affordable, practical or acceptable. We are talking about a highly targetted operation almost on a pilot basis aimed at the worst hotspots.' One of the worst hotspots in Britain is around Moretonhampstead. He said that the disease was now spreading southwards, off the moor. The aim would be to keep the boundaries of targetted areas 'reasonably secure' to prevent diseased badgers from escaping or healthy badgers moving into diseased setts. Trevor Lawson, of the Badger Trust, said that the idea of keeping badgers out of targetted areas was 'frankly laughable'. In order to be effective, government scientists have advised that culls would need to be intensive and carried out over areas of at least 300 sq km for five-seven years. 'How are they proposing to secure the boundary?' he queried. He said that some newspaper reports that eight out of ten badgers were infected was wildly exaggerated. In fact, Professor John Bourne reporting to the House of Commons Rural Affairs Committee gave figures of four-40 per cent. 'The NFU's difficulty is its officials have put so much of their reputation on the line over badger culling. The science shows culling cannot work,' said Mr Lawson. The main culprit, he argued, was cattle to cattle transmission, assisted by 14 million cattle a year moving around the country. He pointed to Northern Ireland, which he said has reduced bovine TB by 40 per cent in a single year through better testing. Cattle are tested annually, using not just the skin test, which he said missed one in three infected cattle, but also the more sensitive gamma-interferon test. 'I don't think farmers believe any more than we do that a badger cull would work, but they are using it as a stick to beat the government with.'
