the rowan tree (luis)

From time to time, I find myself wanting to write on subjects dear to my heart in relation to the natural world and spirit medicine: bird lore, animal lore, plant lore, tree lore. You will have seen such posts of mine.

There is a lot to write about this, and about my own discovery of the difference between, say, plant pharmacological medicine and plant spirit medicine – that is, the plant's vibrational essence on more subtle realms of being (the same applies to birds, animals, trees of course, and this is not merely a symbolic way of speaking of them but part of the Old Ways' wisdom teachings, the ancient mysteries). But I'm not going there now – that's for a different time.

For days now, maybe even weeks, the rowan tree has been nudging and nudging me. That's her above; and yes I know you've seen her recently on this blog.

'Shut up,' I've been saying, gently. 'Your time is spring.' And back she has come, so – even though I don't know what I'm wanting to say – I'll do her the honour of taking notice of the prompting.

OK, so the rowan, the mountain ash or quickbeam ('tree of life'). (No relation to the ash, fraxinus; her family is the rose family.)

Her month in the Celtic tree alphabet, according to Robert Graves, is January 21-February 17. Her name in the old alphabet is Luis. She straddles – her month straddles – one of the Goddess' festivals, that of Imbolc, Candlemas to the Christians, a time of the inward flame; very much connected with Brigid, Bridget, Bride, the Great Goddess of the Celtic peoples, whose role was nominally taken over by Mary in the Christian church. You might remember I spent last weekend in one of the great Bride areas of Britain (swans and all, very much dedicated to the Goddess). (For those who are interested, I'm intending to offer an Imbolc residential weekend tending our inner flames next year, and as some of you know I lead an annual retreat on that ancient druidic isle, Iona, which boasts a connection with the Goddess – in Bride's Islands, the Hebrides, annually.) So since She's been actively around for me the last week or two, more than usual, perhaps it's not surprising that one of Her trees is pushing herself into my consciousness. And surely her, the rowan's, shadow-month is now – her scarlet glory inescapable. (She also figures in ancient samhain rituals – that's Hallowe'en now: All Souls and All Hallows, on 31 October-1st November.)

What can I tell you about the rowan? Her name in English probably derives from the Norse 'runa', meaning 'whispers' and 'secrets' – and connected of course with 'runes'.

She's a threshold tree; thriving even in rocky areas at around the edges of the tree-line. She lives gracefully on mountains, in woods, on moors; dancing in the edge-zones. She mediates, I'd say, between the worlds, as threshold trees do. I associate her with the upland areas of Britain: a great joy at the moment, this very berried time, is driving across Dartmoor to visit family and seeing how lit the moor is with these blood-red bejewelled trees – it's impossible to drive through the land and not be moved by their delicate exuberance. Her canopy lets in light; she claims her place lightly, too.

She's a tree of protection: farmers used to hang a sprig of rowan in the stables and barns for their over-wintering animals; her wood also protected cows and their milk (both connected with the Goddess); rural people would hang a string of rowan berries, or small crosses made from its wood and tied with red ribbon, at their front door for protection from whatever troublesome spirits were trying to gain access. (Interestingly this often happened at Easter, or on May Day.)

In the bardic tradition the rowan was a tree of inspiration, and her name in Old Irish is fid na ndruad,  the druid or wizard's tree. In Wales, sometimes you find the rowan planted in graveyards alongside the yew: here, she accompanies the soul's passage through the gateway to the Otherworld, or death. In Norse mythology, she saved Thor from being swept away in a deluge; and, more, she was sacred because, some say, the first woman was made from her wood. It's also said that the Silver Branch of the shaman was made from rowan (or sometimes hazel).

Some people use the twigs for dowsing – although she's not obviously a water-loving tree I find she has an affinity with water. She also brings, it is said, as well as divinatory powers, a kind of clarity of vision, or even clairvoyance. You will find her, sometimes, at sacred wells; this points at both these notions. She may, it is said, allow one to see oneself and others, one's true motivations and qualities, more clearly.

Later, she was the chosen wood for making spindles (alongside, of course, the spindle tree) as her lithe branches grow straight enough and flexible. This connects her further with Brigid, patroness of poetry, smithcraft (the fires of the forge), and – spinning and weaving, notably the threads of the web of life.

Her berries are blood-cleansers, and immune-system boosters, on both physical and subtle levels. Wearing a string of them feels nourishing and protecting.

A storyteller local to me – he so looks the part, elderly and whiskered, dressed in ancient tweeds and to be found wandering the byways and holloways – once opened a story with the simplest of objects: a tiny old glass vial with three dried rowan berries in it. I don't quite know why it was so powerful, but this was very clearly a magical object, as everyone there understood (we could find all sorts of associations in Celtic mythology with the three drops of elixir that landed on the future Taliesin's finger from the cauldron of life, death and rebirth of the great Mother-Goddess Ceridwen; the three drops of blood in the snow, with the black feather – the colours of alchemical transformation – that awoke Parsifal from his unconsciousness and sent him off to make his marriage; and there are others).

As one of the sacred trees of Britain, it was once taboo to use any part of her other than the berries for ritual purposes or to make a drink or jelly.

Last week, I made a jelly from her berries alongside some windfall apples - the deep red amber glow lights the kitchen. And – with a leaf or two of lemon verbena and rose geranium in the brew, the fragrance is heavenly.

Some winters I thread the berries on a thin red string (reminding myself of the Yeats' poem from which my writing programme derives the name of 'Fire in the Head', the old Celtic phrase for awen, inspiration) and place that on a small shrine near water, flowers and a candle.

There, Rowan.  Have I done you justice yet?

PS: thought you might like to know that the rowan in the pic above grows right at the end of the Dartmoor prehistoric drovers' track that features as the front cover of my new novel, off to the right and up a bit – up a bit more – there in the sidebar near the top...

~

My friend Fred Hageneder has written a series of beautiful and inspiring books about trees. I've consulted one of them for parts of this: The Living Wisdom of Trees (Duncan Baird Publishers).

the badger cull

SEE NEW COMPREHENSIVE OVERVIEW: FEBRUARY 2014:
http://roselle-angwin.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/the-badger-cull-overview-update.html

Some of you will know that I have been directing massive energy over the last couple of years towards getting out correct scientific info with regard to the badger cull. Initially my intention was to add my support to attempts to stop the cull; recently, it has been to draw attention to the ill-conceived and undoubtedly both cruel and ineffective actual cull that is now currently in operation in the Westcountry.

There is a mass of information available, and I've made it my business to read the science behind it all. I read the original report, commissioned by the Government from their own chief vet and science adviser over a 9-year period of study (the conclusion was that a cull would be at best minimally effective). I then read what DEFRA did with the report, which in their own report bears little resemblance to the facts.

There is far too much to say in relation to all this. (Basically, the issue is one of farming practices, big money [NFU landowners], and scapegoating.)

But today a Somerset County Councillor, Mike Rigby, has blogged his own thoughts about the cull taking place in his area, and they're worth reblogging here. Please read this, and please please if you haven't already, sign some of the online petitions, and/or write to Owen Paterson, the Min of Ag, and your own MP with Mike Rigby's article, perhaps; or do anything you can to get the word out (social media) about this farce, this barbaric and cruel farce.

Incidentally, I have farming friends and family, and understand the distress caused by bTB and herd loss. The issue is the fact that culling badgers won't prevent the disease or resolve the situation; chances are they are only one very small strand in a complex of issues, many of which are directly related to animal welfare and husbandry.

What we need to do is wait until the field trials of the cattle vaccine have been concluded next year, and then vaccinate cattle – cheap, humane, and, since it appears that 'we' are in any case selling TB-infected meat into the food chain, that particular argument against vaccinating holds no water.

What we need to do even more urgently is to review our relationship to the animal kindgom, farmed and feral.

The real issue with bTB is intensive farming methods; this is where the huge sums of money involved in the cull need to go.

If you are a landowner, or know a landowner, please get the word out that there are trained volunteer vaccinators in the Westcountry more than happy to vaccinate your badgers at the cost of the vaccine alone, rather than the estimated £2000 per badger that the cull costs. If we could only vaccinate 70% of the badger population (if only) the cull couldn't go ahead.

Here's Mike Rigby's blog:

~

Two weeks ago I wrote a blogpost setting out what I had learned about the pilot badger culls in the preceding few weeks. Previously I had not held a strong view on the subject and my interest had been piqued by a cull objector asking me if I knew that culled badgers were NOT to be tested for bTB. I doubted that this was true but eventually dragged out of Defra that it was in fact the case; there would be NO testing. I found this staggering and resolved to investigate further and the product was my blogpost. It received as many views in a weekend as my blog typically gets in 6 months so it’s clear that plenty of people feel strongly about this. As I say, two weeks have passed and so much new information has dripped out, I felt that a follow-up was required.

So what have we learned since my blogpost? First and foremost, we’ve learned that Defra is completely incapable of holding the line on the justification for the badger culls. Guy Robinson, Special Advisor to Owen Paterson, told me repeatedly that the lack of bTB testing on culled badgers was because the pilot culls are to test the humaneness of free shooting as a method of culling. This is backed up by Defra’s subsequent blogpost. But, as I pointed out in my first post on the subject, this is inconsistent with the requirement to cull 70% of the badgers in the pilot area. Remember, so important is it to do this that the pilot cull was postponed for a year. Many of the badger Twitterati –or the digital badger protection force, as I have come to think of them – have asked the valid question “If, as Defra insist, this cull is about assessing the humaneness of the method of culling, why do they need to kill 5,000 badgers? It doesn’t take 5,000 to work out whether marksmen can aim properly.” It’s a fair question and one I asked in my original blogpost. And herein lies the inherent confusion in Defra’s argument. When people ask Defra this question, “Why kill 5,000 to test the method?” Defra falls back on the argument that “Natural England have licensed culls in Somerset and Gloucestershire to remove badgers from the area to start bringing down the high levels of infection in these areas.” So here they are arguing that the pilot culls are in fact to help reduce bTB. They’ve abandoned the line that they are solely to assess humaneness. We are therefore entitled to ask the question again. “Given that the cull is to test the efficiency of culling badgers in reducing bTB why on earth would you not want to know the incidence of bTB in the local badger population?” The data from the Randomised Badger Cull Trials (RBCT) are now 7 years old. The abiding and overwhelming suspicion remains that the absence of testing is motivated solely by a deep-seated fear that such testing would show minimal infection, perhaps even less than the 16% discovered in the RBCT.

What is also interesting about Defra’s latter blogpost is the appearance of the statement “The cull will be repeated for four years, which is what the science recommends to ensure we achieve a long-term benefit in reducing the level of disease.” No ifs. No buts. It WILL be repeated. Regardless of the results of this supposed pilot. Regardless of whether free-shooting is assessed as humane, the cull will go on. Regardless of the fact that the cull organisers will have no more idea of the incidence of bTB in the badger population that they have just tried to eradicate. Yet more evidence that this cull, its continuation and propagation to new areas has as much to do with science as the Flat Earth Society.

And talking of a lack of scientific rigour, the Government’s Chief Veterinary Officer has now admitted there are “no definitive criteria” for measuring how humane the current pilot operations are. So, again, “What is the point of the cull?”

Since my last blogpost we have also seen a steady trickle of botched kills. Badgers found shot on roads and elsewhere, clearly not in approved kill areas. This would suggest that either free-shooting is not proving to be a particularly humane method of culling, as badgers are running off to die or that there is a sizeable illegal badger cull going on, perhaps using the official cull as cover. The former explanation would be a further nail in the cull’s coffin, the latter requires a Police investigation. Defra insist, each time a shot badger is found away from a kill area, that it is nothing to do with the cull. But the speed of their denials and the fact that they don’t examine the carcasses is far too knee-jerk to be credible. Maybe the marksmen are telling Defra that every kill is clean, that each badger shot dies on the spot. But to swallow such assurances is naive and gullible. I will be enquiring of Avon & Somerset Police whether there are any active investigations into illegal badger shooting. If not, that would strongly suggest that these shot badgers are botched kills from the cull.

Something else I’ve learnt since my first blogpost is that in order to defray the costs of compensating farmers for infected cattle slaughtered due to TB , the meat from those animals is sold into the human food chain. The supermarkets apparently won’t have it but there’s every chance that the meat is getting into hospitals and schools. Now either there’s a major scandal here based on the fact that we are feeding ‘dangerously infected’ meat to some of the most vulnerable people in the country or there’s a major scandal here based on the fact that such a fuss is being made about an animal disease which has no impact on whether the meat can be eaten. Either way, you probably get the impression that I feel that there’s a major scandal here. The essential question is this: “How can it be acceptable to eat meat from cows with TB but not from cows that have been vaccinated against TB?” This is, of course, the line that we keep being fed by Defra, that the EU will not allow vaccinated meat into the foodchain. How long before we see Owen Paterson shoving a TB burger into one of his children’s mouths?

A further issue of concern surrounds the persistent allegations from cull protesters that the Police are acting as the security wing of the NFU. There have been allegations that the Police have been handing out warning leaflets produced by the NFU and that individuals have been temporarily detained on behalf of the NFU. I fully understand that there is likely to be exaggeration on both sides in this action but, if proven, such actions by the Police must be legally questionable and certainly very worrying. And what is all this policing costing? And what are Defra spending on social media monitoring? I feel some FOI requests coming on…..

Also of concern is Defra’s refusal to comply with the Information Commissioner’s ruling that they must release to the Humane Society information on the humaneness of the cull. Once again, we must ask “What have they got to hide?” It all adds to the sense that Defra are fully aware that their case has no scientific basis but that they are determined to press on for reasons that they are not prepared to divulge. I simply don’t accept that it is open to Government to operate in this way. Actions must be able to display sound logic even if we don’t agree with the aims. Government and politics is held in low enough esteem as it is without Government departments heading off on completely unjustified and unjustifiable flights of fancy.

One final thought. The cull has been so badly organised and the case for it is so flimsy, I am left wondering whether Defra has deliberately set it up to fail. This would give them the opportunity to say to the NFU “Look we tried. We set up the legal framework for you to cull badgers and you made a hash of it. So it won’t be rolled out elsewhere.” I wonder this because this shambles cannot possibly be the result of the best efforts of a major Government Department in one of the world’s biggest economies.

As I have said before, my approach to this issue is based on reason and logic. Policy must be based on sound evidence. These pilot badger culls are as far from a sound evidence base as any policy that I have seen. There is no chance that the Somerset and Gloucestershire pilots will be abandoned. They will inevitably be seen through to the end (in time if not numbers of culled badgers). But I think that with the continued application of pressure and careful dissection of Defra’s fatuous arguments, there is a very good chance that they will not be repeated. So, to the ‘Digital Badger Protection Force’, the Injured Badger Patrols and everyone else dedicated to ending this nonsense, keep it up, the direction of travel on this is all one way. Momentum is firmly against the cull.


http://mikerigby.org/2013/09/27/badger-cull-2-update/

~

For more, see also http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/sep/28/badger-cull-bovine-tb 

You can also help by donating even a small amount to help train a vaccinator, buy cage-traps for the vaccination process (humane, of course), and sponsoring campaigns on this link to the Totnes group: http://www.gofundme.com/2ygbtg 

And also see: http://www.badgergate.org/what-you-can-do/

Two weeks ago I wrote a blogpost setting out what I had learned about the pilot badger culls in the preceding few weeks. Previously I had not held a strong view on the subject and my interest had been piqued by a cull objector asking me if I knew that culled badgers were NOT to be tested for bTB. I doubted that this was true but eventually dragged out of Defra that it was in fact the case; there would be NO testing. I found this staggering and resolved to investigate further and the product was my blogpost. It received as many views in a weekend as my blog typically gets in 6 months so it’s clear that plenty of people feel strongly about this. As I say, two weeks have passed and so much new information has dripped out, I felt that a follow-up was required.
So what have we learned since my blogpost? First and foremost, we’ve learned that Defra is completely incapable of holding the line on the justification for the badger culls. Guy Robinson, Special Advisor to Owen Paterson, told me repeatedly that the lack of bTB testing on culled badgers was because the pilot culls are to test the humaneness of free shooting as a method of culling. This is backed up by Defra’s subsequent blogpost. But, as I pointed out in my first post on the subject, this is inconsistent with the requirement to cull 70% of the badgers in the pilot area. Remember, so important is it to do this that the pilot cull was postponed for a year. Many of the badger Twitterati –or the digital badger protection force, as I have come to think of them – have asked the valid question “If, as Defra insist, this cull is about assessing the humaneness of the method of culling, why do they need to kill 5,000 badgers? It doesn’t take 5,000 to work out whether marksmen can aim properly.” It’s a fair question and one I asked in my original blogpost. And herein lies the inherent confusion in Defra’s argument. When people ask Defra this question, “Why kill 5,000 to test the method?” Defra falls back on the argument that “Natural England have licensed culls in Somerset and Gloucestershire to remove badgers from the area to start bringing down the high levels of infection in these areas.” So here they are arguing that the pilot culls are in fact to help reduce bTB. They’ve abandoned the line that they are solely to assess humaneness. We are therefore entitled to ask the question again. “Given that the cull is to test the efficiency of culling badgers in reducing bTB why on earth would you not want to know the incidence of bTB in the local badger population?” The data from the Randomised Badger Cull Trials (RBCT) are now 7 years old. The abiding and overwhelming suspicion remains that the absence of testing is motivated solely by a deep-seated fear that such testing would show minimal infection, perhaps even less than the 16% discovered in the RBCT.
What is also interesting about Defra’s latter blogpost is the appearance of the statement “The cull will be repeated for four years, which is what the science recommends to ensure we achieve a long-term benefit in reducing the level of disease.” No ifs. No buts. It WILL be repeated. Regardless of the results of this supposed pilot. Regardless of whether free-shooting is assessed as humane, the cull will go on. Regardless of the fact that the cull organisers will have no more idea of the incidence of bTB in the badger population that they have just tried to eradicate. Yet more evidence that this cull, its continuation and propagation to new areas has as much to do with science as the Flat Earth Society.
And talking of a lack of scientific rigour, the Government’s Chief Veterinary Officer has now admitted there are “no definitive criteria” for measuring how humane the current pilot operations are. So, again, “What is the point of the cull?”
Since my last blogpost we have also seen a steady trickle of botched kills. Badgers found shot on roads and elsewhere, clearly not in approved kill areas. This would suggest that either free-shooting is not proving to be a particularly humane method of culling, as badgers are running off to die or that there is a sizeable illegal badger cull going on, perhaps using the official cull as cover. The former explanation would be a further nail in the cull’s coffin, the latter requires a Police investigation. Defra insist, each time a shot badger is found away from a kill area, that it is nothing to do with the cull. But the speed of their denials and the fact that they don’t examine the carcasses is far too knee-jerk to be credible. Maybe the marksmen are telling Defra that every kill is clean, that each badger shot dies on the spot. But to swallow such assurances is naive and gullible. I will be enquiring of Avon & Somerset Police whether there are any active investigations into illegal badger shooting. If not, that would strongly suggest that these shot badgers are botched kills from the cull.
Something else I’ve learnt since my first blogpost is that in order to defray the costs of compensating farmers for infected cattle slaughtered due to TB , the meat from those animals is sold into the human food chain. The supermarkets apparently won’t have it but there’s every chance that the meat is getting into hospitals and schools. Now either there’s a major scandal here based on the fact that we are feeding ‘dangerously infected’ meat to some of the most vulnerable people in the country or there’s a major scandal here based on the fact that such a fuss is being made about an animal disease which has no impact on whether the meat can be eaten. Either way, you probably get the impression that I feel that there’s a major scandal here. The essential question is this: “How can it be acceptable to eat meat from cows with TB but not from cows that have been vaccinated against TB?” This is, of course, the line that we keep being fed by Defra, that the EU will not allow vaccinated meat into the foodchain. How long before we see Owen Paterson shoving a TB burger into one of his children’s mouths?
A further issue of concern surrounds the persistent allegations from cull protesters that the Police are acting as the security wing of the NFU. There have been allegations that the Police have been handing out warning leaflets produced by the NFU and that individuals have been temporarily detained on behalf of the NFU. I fully understand that there is likely to be exaggeration on both sides in this action but, if proven, such actions by the Police must be legally questionable and certainly very worrying. And what is all this policing costing? And what are Defra spending on social media monitoring? I feel some FOI requests coming on…..
Also of concern is Defra’s refusal to comply with the Information Commissioner’s ruling that they must release to the Humane Society information on the humaneness of the cull. Once again, we must ask “What have they got to hide?” It all adds to the sense that Defra are fully aware that their case has no scientific basis but that they are determined to press on for reasons that they are not prepared to divulge. I simply don’t accept that it is open to Government to operate in this way. Actions must be able to display sound logic even if we don’t agree with the aims. Government and politics is held in low enough esteem as it is without Government departments heading off on completely unjustified and unjustifiable flights of fancy.
One final thought. The cull has been so badly organised and the case for it is so flimsy, I am left wondering whether Defra has deliberately set it up to fail. This would give them the opportunity to say to the NFU “Look we tried. We set up the legal framework for you to cull badgers and you made a hash of it. So it won’t be rolled out elsewhere.” I wonder this because this shambles cannot possibly be the result of the best efforts of a major Government Department in one of the world’s biggest economies.
As I have said before, my approach to this issue is based on reason and logic. Policy must be based on sound evidence. These pilot badger culls are as far from a sound evidence base as any policy that I have seen. There is no chance that the Somerset and Gloucestershire pilots will be abandoned. They will inevitably be seen through to the end (in time if not numbers of culled badgers). But I think that with the continued application of pressure and careful dissection of Defra’s fatuous arguments, there is a very good chance that they will not be repeated. So, to the ‘Digital Badger Protection Force’, the Injured Badger Patrols and everyone else dedicated to ending this nonsense, keep it up, the direction of travel on this is all one way. Momentum is firmly against the cull.
- See more at: http://mikerigby.org/2013/09/27/badger-cull-2-update/#sthash.tj623x8D.dpuf

Two weeks ago I wrote a blogpost setting out what I had learned about the pilot badger culls in the preceding few weeks. Previously I had not held a strong view on the subject and my interest had been piqued by a cull objector asking me if I knew that culled badgers were NOT to be tested for bTB. I doubted that this was true but eventually dragged out of Defra that it was in fact the case; there would be NO testing. I found this staggering and resolved to investigate further and the product was my blogpost. It received as many views in a weekend as my blog typically gets in 6 months so it’s clear that plenty of people feel strongly about this. As I say, two weeks have passed and so much new information has dripped out, I felt that a follow-up was required.
So what have we learned since my blogpost? First and foremost, we’ve learned that Defra is completely incapable of holding the line on the justification for the badger culls. Guy Robinson, Special Advisor to Owen Paterson, told me repeatedly that the lack of bTB testing on culled badgers was because the pilot culls are to test the humaneness of free shooting as a method of culling. This is backed up by Defra’s subsequent blogpost. But, as I pointed out in my first post on the subject, this is inconsistent with the requirement to cull 70% of the badgers in the pilot area. Remember, so important is it to do this that the pilot cull was postponed for a year. Many of the badger Twitterati –or the digital badger protection force, as I have come to think of them – have asked the valid question “If, as Defra insist, this cull is about assessing the humaneness of the method of culling, why do they need to kill 5,000 badgers? It doesn’t take 5,000 to work out whether marksmen can aim properly.” It’s a fair question and one I asked in my original blogpost. And herein lies the inherent confusion in Defra’s argument. When people ask Defra this question, “Why kill 5,000 to test the method?” Defra falls back on the argument that “Natural England have licensed culls in Somerset and Gloucestershire to remove badgers from the area to start bringing down the high levels of infection in these areas.” So here they are arguing that the pilot culls are in fact to help reduce bTB. They’ve abandoned the line that they are solely to assess humaneness. We are therefore entitled to ask the question again. “Given that the cull is to test the efficiency of culling badgers in reducing bTB why on earth would you not want to know the incidence of bTB in the local badger population?” The data from the Randomised Badger Cull Trials (RBCT) are now 7 years old. The abiding and overwhelming suspicion remains that the absence of testing is motivated solely by a deep-seated fear that such testing would show minimal infection, perhaps even less than the 16% discovered in the RBCT.
What is also interesting about Defra’s latter blogpost is the appearance of the statement “The cull will be repeated for four years, which is what the science recommends to ensure we achieve a long-term benefit in reducing the level of disease.” No ifs. No buts. It WILL be repeated. Regardless of the results of this supposed pilot. Regardless of whether free-shooting is assessed as humane, the cull will go on. Regardless of the fact that the cull organisers will have no more idea of the incidence of bTB in the badger population that they have just tried to eradicate. Yet more evidence that this cull, its continuation and propagation to new areas has as much to do with science as the Flat Earth Society.
And talking of a lack of scientific rigour, the Government’s Chief Veterinary Officer has now admitted there are “no definitive criteria” for measuring how humane the current pilot operations are. So, again, “What is the point of the cull?”
Since my last blogpost we have also seen a steady trickle of botched kills. Badgers found shot on roads and elsewhere, clearly not in approved kill areas. This would suggest that either free-shooting is not proving to be a particularly humane method of culling, as badgers are running off to die or that there is a sizeable illegal badger cull going on, perhaps using the official cull as cover. The former explanation would be a further nail in the cull’s coffin, the latter requires a Police investigation. Defra insist, each time a shot badger is found away from a kill area, that it is nothing to do with the cull. But the speed of their denials and the fact that they don’t examine the carcasses is far too knee-jerk to be credible. Maybe the marksmen are telling Defra that every kill is clean, that each badger shot dies on the spot. But to swallow such assurances is naive and gullible. I will be enquiring of Avon & Somerset Police whether there are any active investigations into illegal badger shooting. If not, that would strongly suggest that these shot badgers are botched kills from the cull.
Something else I’ve learnt since my first blogpost is that in order to defray the costs of compensating farmers for infected cattle slaughtered due to TB , the meat from those animals is sold into the human food chain. The supermarkets apparently won’t have it but there’s every chance that the meat is getting into hospitals and schools. Now either there’s a major scandal here based on the fact that we are feeding ‘dangerously infected’ meat to some of the most vulnerable people in the country or there’s a major scandal here based on the fact that such a fuss is being made about an animal disease which has no impact on whether the meat can be eaten. Either way, you probably get the impression that I feel that there’s a major scandal here. The essential question is this: “How can it be acceptable to eat meat from cows with TB but not from cows that have been vaccinated against TB?” This is, of course, the line that we keep being fed by Defra, that the EU will not allow vaccinated meat into the foodchain. How long before we see Owen Paterson shoving a TB burger into one of his children’s mouths?
A further issue of concern surrounds the persistent allegations from cull protesters that the Police are acting as the security wing of the NFU. There have been allegations that the Police have been handing out warning leaflets produced by the NFU and that individuals have been temporarily detained on behalf of the NFU. I fully understand that there is likely to be exaggeration on both sides in this action but, if proven, such actions by the Police must be legally questionable and certainly very worrying. And what is all this policing costing? And what are Defra spending on social media monitoring? I feel some FOI requests coming on…..
Also of concern is Defra’s refusal to comply with the Information Commissioner’s ruling that they must release to the Humane Society information on the humaneness of the cull. Once again, we must ask “What have they got to hide?” It all adds to the sense that Defra are fully aware that their case has no scientific basis but that they are determined to press on for reasons that they are not prepared to divulge. I simply don’t accept that it is open to Government to operate in this way. Actions must be able to display sound logic even if we don’t agree with the aims. Government and politics is held in low enough esteem as it is without Government departments heading off on completely unjustified and unjustifiable flights of fancy.
One final thought. The cull has been so badly organised and the case for it is so flimsy, I am left wondering whether Defra has deliberately set it up to fail. This would give them the opportunity to say to the NFU “Look we tried. We set up the legal framework for you to cull badgers and you made a hash of it. So it won’t be rolled out elsewhere.” I wonder this because this shambles cannot possibly be the result of the best efforts of a major Government Department in one of the world’s biggest economies.
As I have said before, my approach to this issue is based on reason and logic. Policy must be based on sound evidence. These pilot badger culls are as far from a sound evidence base as any policy that I have seen. There is no chance that the Somerset and Gloucestershire pilots will be abandoned. They will inevitably be seen through to the end (in time if not numbers of culled badgers). But I think that with the continued application of pressure and careful dissection of Defra’s fatuous arguments, there is a very good chance that they will not be repeated. So, to the ‘Digital Badger Protection Force’, the Injured Badger Patrols and everyone else dedicated to ending this nonsense, keep it up, the direction of travel on this is all one way. Momentum is firmly against the cull.
- See more at: http://mikerigby.org/2013/09/27/badger-cull-2-update/#comment-619

Two weeks ago I wrote a blogpost setting out what I had learned about the pilot badger culls in the preceding few weeks. Previously I had not held a strong view on the subject and my interest had been piqued by a cull objector asking me if I knew that culled badgers were NOT to be tested for bTB. I doubted that this was true but eventually dragged out of Defra that it was in fact the case; there would be NO testing. I found this staggering and resolved to investigate further and the product was my blogpost. It received as many views in a weekend as my blog typically gets in 6 months so it’s clear that plenty of people feel strongly about this. As I say, two weeks have passed and so much new information has dripped out, I felt that a follow-up was required.
So what have we learned since my blogpost? First and foremost, we’ve learned that Defra is completely incapable of holding the line on the justification for the badger culls. Guy Robinson, Special Advisor to Owen Paterson, told me repeatedly that the lack of bTB testing on culled badgers was because the pilot culls are to test the humaneness of free shooting as a method of culling. This is backed up by Defra’s subsequent blogpost. But, as I pointed out in my first post on the subject, this is inconsistent with the requirement to cull 70% of the badgers in the pilot area. Remember, so important is it to do this that the pilot cull was postponed for a year. Many of the badger Twitterati –or the digital badger protection force, as I have come to think of them – have asked the valid question “If, as Defra insist, this cull is about assessing the humaneness of the method of culling, why do they need to kill 5,000 badgers? It doesn’t take 5,000 to work out whether marksmen can aim properly.” It’s a fair question and one I asked in my original blogpost. And herein lies the inherent confusion in Defra’s argument. When people ask Defra this question, “Why kill 5,000 to test the method?” Defra falls back on the argument that “Natural England have licensed culls in Somerset and Gloucestershire to remove badgers from the area to start bringing down the high levels of infection in these areas.” So here they are arguing that the pilot culls are in fact to help reduce bTB. They’ve abandoned the line that they are solely to assess humaneness. We are therefore entitled to ask the question again. “Given that the cull is to test the efficiency of culling badgers in reducing bTB why on earth would you not want to know the incidence of bTB in the local badger population?” The data from the Randomised Badger Cull Trials (RBCT) are now 7 years old. The abiding and overwhelming suspicion remains that the absence of testing is motivated solely by a deep-seated fear that such testing would show minimal infection, perhaps even less than the 16% discovered in the RBCT.
What is also interesting about Defra’s latter blogpost is the appearance of the statement “The cull will be repeated for four years, which is what the science recommends to ensure we achieve a long-term benefit in reducing the level of disease.” No ifs. No buts. It WILL be repeated. Regardless of the results of this supposed pilot. Regardless of whether free-shooting is assessed as humane, the cull will go on. Regardless of the fact that the cull organisers will have no more idea of the incidence of bTB in the badger population that they have just tried to eradicate. Yet more evidence that this cull, its continuation and propagation to new areas has as much to do with science as the Flat Earth Society.
And talking of a lack of scientific rigour, the Government’s Chief Veterinary Officer has now admitted there are “no definitive criteria” for measuring how humane the current pilot operations are. So, again, “What is the point of the cull?”
Since my last blogpost we have also seen a steady trickle of botched kills. Badgers found shot on roads and elsewhere, clearly not in approved kill areas. This would suggest that either free-shooting is not proving to be a particularly humane method of culling, as badgers are running off to die or that there is a sizeable illegal badger cull going on, perhaps using the official cull as cover. The former explanation would be a further nail in the cull’s coffin, the latter requires a Police investigation. Defra insist, each time a shot badger is found away from a kill area, that it is nothing to do with the cull. But the speed of their denials and the fact that they don’t examine the carcasses is far too knee-jerk to be credible. Maybe the marksmen are telling Defra that every kill is clean, that each badger shot dies on the spot. But to swallow such assurances is naive and gullible. I will be enquiring of Avon & Somerset Police whether there are any active investigations into illegal badger shooting. If not, that would strongly suggest that these shot badgers are botched kills from the cull.
Something else I’ve learnt since my first blogpost is that in order to defray the costs of compensating farmers for infected cattle slaughtered due to TB , the meat from those animals is sold into the human food chain. The supermarkets apparently won’t have it but there’s every chance that the meat is getting into hospitals and schools. Now either there’s a major scandal here based on the fact that we are feeding ‘dangerously infected’ meat to some of the most vulnerable people in the country or there’s a major scandal here based on the fact that such a fuss is being made about an animal disease which has no impact on whether the meat can be eaten. Either way, you probably get the impression that I feel that there’s a major scandal here. The essential question is this: “How can it be acceptable to eat meat from cows with TB but not from cows that have been vaccinated against TB?” This is, of course, the line that we keep being fed by Defra, that the EU will not allow vaccinated meat into the foodchain. How long before we see Owen Paterson shoving a TB burger into one of his children’s mouths?
A further issue of concern surrounds the persistent allegations from cull protesters that the Police are acting as the security wing of the NFU. There have been allegations that the Police have been handing out warning leaflets produced by the NFU and that individuals have been temporarily detained on behalf of the NFU. I fully understand that there is likely to be exaggeration on both sides in this action but, if proven, such actions by the Police must be legally questionable and certainly very worrying. And what is all this policing costing? And what are Defra spending on social media monitoring? I feel some FOI requests coming on…..
Also of concern is Defra’s refusal to comply with the Information Commissioner’s ruling that they must release to the Humane Society information on the humaneness of the cull. Once again, we must ask “What have they got to hide?” It all adds to the sense that Defra are fully aware that their case has no scientific basis but that they are determined to press on for reasons that they are not prepared to divulge. I simply don’t accept that it is open to Government to operate in this way. Actions must be able to display sound logic even if we don’t agree with the aims. Government and politics is held in low enough esteem as it is without Government departments heading off on completely unjustified and unjustifiable flights of fancy.
One final thought. The cull has been so badly organised and the case for it is so flimsy, I am left wondering whether Defra has deliberately set it up to fail. This would give them the opportunity to say to the NFU “Look we tried. We set up the legal framework for you to cull badgers and you made a hash of it. So it won’t be rolled out elsewhere.” I wonder this because this shambles cannot possibly be the result of the best efforts of a major Government Department in one of the world’s biggest economies.
As I have said before, my approach to this issue is based on reason and logic. Policy must be based on sound evidence. These pilot badger culls are as far from a sound evidence base as any policy that I have seen. There is no chance that the Somerset and Gloucestershire pilots will be abandoned. They will inevitably be seen through to the end (in time if not numbers of culled badgers). But I think that with the continued application of pressure and careful dissection of Defra’s fatuous arguments, there is a very good chance that they will not be repeated. So, to the ‘Digital Badger Protection Force’, the Injured Badger Patrols and everyone else dedicated to ending this nonsense, keep it up, the direction of travel on this is all one way. Momentum is firmly against the cull.
- See more at: http://mikerigby.org/2013/09/27/badger-cull-2-update/#comment-619

Two weeks ago I wrote a blogpost setting out what I had learned about the pilot badger culls in the preceding few weeks. Previously I had not held a strong view on the subject and my interest had been piqued by a cull objector asking me if I knew that culled badgers were NOT to be tested for bTB. I doubted that this was true but eventually dragged out of Defra that it was in fact the case; there would be NO testing. I found this staggering and resolved to investigate further and the product was my blogpost. It received as many views in a weekend as my blog typically gets in 6 months so it’s clear that plenty of people feel strongly about this. As I say, two weeks have passed and so much new information has dripped out, I felt that a follow-up was required.
So what have we learned since my blogpost? First and foremost, we’ve learned that Defra is completely incapable of holding the line on the justification for the badger culls. Guy Robinson, Special Advisor to Owen Paterson, told me repeatedly that the lack of bTB testing on culled badgers was because the pilot culls are to test the humaneness of free shooting as a method of culling. This is backed up by Defra’s subsequent blogpost. But, as I pointed out in my first post on the subject, this is inconsistent with the requirement to cull 70% of the badgers in the pilot area. Remember, so important is it to do this that the pilot cull was postponed for a year. Many of the badger Twitterati –or the digital badger protection force, as I have come to think of them – have asked the valid question “If, as Defra insist, this cull is about assessing the humaneness of the method of culling, why do they need to kill 5,000 badgers? It doesn’t take 5,000 to work out whether marksmen can aim properly.” It’s a fair question and one I asked in my original blogpost. And herein lies the inherent confusion in Defra’s argument. When people ask Defra this question, “Why kill 5,000 to test the method?” Defra falls back on the argument that “Natural England have licensed culls in Somerset and Gloucestershire to remove badgers from the area to start bringing down the high levels of infection in these areas.” So here they are arguing that the pilot culls are in fact to help reduce bTB. They’ve abandoned the line that they are solely to assess humaneness. We are therefore entitled to ask the question again. “Given that the cull is to test the efficiency of culling badgers in reducing bTB why on earth would you not want to know the incidence of bTB in the local badger population?” The data from the Randomised Badger Cull Trials (RBCT) are now 7 years old. The abiding and overwhelming suspicion remains that the absence of testing is motivated solely by a deep-seated fear that such testing would show minimal infection, perhaps even less than the 16% discovered in the RBCT.
What is also interesting about Defra’s latter blogpost is the appearance of the statement “The cull will be repeated for four years, which is what the science recommends to ensure we achieve a long-term benefit in reducing the level of disease.” No ifs. No buts. It WILL be repeated. Regardless of the results of this supposed pilot. Regardless of whether free-shooting is assessed as humane, the cull will go on. Regardless of the fact that the cull organisers will have no more idea of the incidence of bTB in the badger population that they have just tried to eradicate. Yet more evidence that this cull, its continuation and propagation to new areas has as much to do with science as the Flat Earth Society.
And talking of a lack of scientific rigour, the Government’s Chief Veterinary Officer has now admitted there are “no definitive criteria” for measuring how humane the current pilot operations are. So, again, “What is the point of the cull?”
Since my last blogpost we have also seen a steady trickle of botched kills. Badgers found shot on roads and elsewhere, clearly not in approved kill areas. This would suggest that either free-shooting is not proving to be a particularly humane method of culling, as badgers are running off to die or that there is a sizeable illegal badger cull going on, perhaps using the official cull as cover. The former explanation would be a further nail in the cull’s coffin, the latter requires a Police investigation. Defra insist, each time a shot badger is found away from a kill area, that it is nothing to do with the cull. But the speed of their denials and the fact that they don’t examine the carcasses is far too knee-jerk to be credible. Maybe the marksmen are telling Defra that every kill is clean, that each badger shot dies on the spot. But to swallow such assurances is naive and gullible. I will be enquiring of Avon & Somerset Police whether there are any active investigations into illegal badger shooting. If not, that would strongly suggest that these shot badgers are botched kills from the cull.
Something else I’ve learnt since my first blogpost is that in order to defray the costs of compensating farmers for infected cattle slaughtered due to TB , the meat from those animals is sold into the human food chain. The supermarkets apparently won’t have it but there’s every chance that the meat is getting into hospitals and schools. Now either there’s a major scandal here based on the fact that we are feeding ‘dangerously infected’ meat to some of the most vulnerable people in the country or there’s a major scandal here based on the fact that such a fuss is being made about an animal disease which has no impact on whether the meat can be eaten. Either way, you probably get the impression that I feel that there’s a major scandal here. The essential question is this: “How can it be acceptable to eat meat from cows with TB but not from cows that have been vaccinated against TB?” This is, of course, the line that we keep being fed by Defra, that the EU will not allow vaccinated meat into the foodchain. How long before we see Owen Paterson shoving a TB burger into one of his children’s mouths?
A further issue of concern surrounds the persistent allegations from cull protesters that the Police are acting as the security wing of the NFU. There have been allegations that the Police have been handing out warning leaflets produced by the NFU and that individuals have been temporarily detained on behalf of the NFU. I fully understand that there is likely to be exaggeration on both sides in this action but, if proven, such actions by the Police must be legally questionable and certainly very worrying. And what is all this policing costing? And what are Defra spending on social media monitoring? I feel some FOI requests coming on…..
Also of concern is Defra’s refusal to comply with the Information Commissioner’s ruling that they must release to the Humane Society information on the humaneness of the cull. Once again, we must ask “What have they got to hide?” It all adds to the sense that Defra are fully aware that their case has no scientific basis but that they are determined to press on for reasons that they are not prepared to divulge. I simply don’t accept that it is open to Government to operate in this way. Actions must be able to display sound logic even if we don’t agree with the aims. Government and politics is held in low enough esteem as it is without Government departments heading off on completely unjustified and unjustifiable flights of fancy.
One final thought. The cull has been so badly organised and the case for it is so flimsy, I am left wondering whether Defra has deliberately set it up to fail. This would give them the opportunity to say to the NFU “Look we tried. We set up the legal framework for you to cull badgers and you made a hash of it. So it won’t be rolled out elsewhere.” I wonder this because this shambles cannot possibly be the result of the best efforts of a major Government Department in one of the world’s biggest economies.
As I have said before, my approach to this issue is based on reason and logic. Policy must be based on sound evidence. These pilot badger culls are as far from a sound evidence base as any policy that I have seen. There is no chance that the Somerset and Gloucestershire pilots will be abandoned. They will inevitably be seen through to the end (in time if not numbers of culled badgers). But I think that with the continued application of pressure and careful dissection of Defra’s fatuous arguments, there is a very good chance that they will not be repeated. So, to the ‘Digital Badger Protection Force’, the Injured Badger Patrols and everyone else dedicated to ending this nonsense, keep it up, the direction of travel on this is all one way. Momentum is firmly against the cull.
- See more at: http://mikerigby.org/2013/09/27/badger-cull-2-update/#sthash.yX4PLRBT.dpuf

Two weeks ago I wrote a blogpost setting out what I had learned about the pilot badger culls in the preceding few weeks. Previously I had not held a strong view on the subject and my interest had been piqued by a cull objector asking me if I knew that culled badgers were NOT to be tested for bTB. I doubted that this was true but eventually dragged out of Defra that it was in fact the case; there would be NO testing. I found this staggering and resolved to investigate further and the product was my blogpost. It received as many views in a weekend as my blog typically gets in 6 months so it’s clear that plenty of people feel strongly about this. As I say, two weeks have passed and so much new information has dripped out, I felt that a follow-up was required.
So what have we learned since my blogpost? First and foremost, we’ve learned that Defra is completely incapable of holding the line on the justification for the badger culls. Guy Robinson, Special Advisor to Owen Paterson, told me repeatedly that the lack of bTB testing on culled badgers was because the pilot culls are to test the humaneness of free shooting as a method of culling. This is backed up by Defra’s subsequent blogpost. But, as I pointed out in my first post on the subject, this is inconsistent with the requirement to cull 70% of the badgers in the pilot area. Remember, so important is it to do this that the pilot cull was postponed for a year. Many of the badger Twitterati –or the digital badger protection force, as I have come to think of them – have asked the valid question “If, as Defra insist, this cull is about assessing the humaneness of the method of culling, why do they need to kill 5,000 badgers? It doesn’t take 5,000 to work out whether marksmen can aim properly.” It’s a fair question and one I asked in my original blogpost. And herein lies the inherent confusion in Defra’s argument. When people ask Defra this question, “Why kill 5,000 to test the method?” Defra falls back on the argument that “Natural England have licensed culls in Somerset and Gloucestershire to remove badgers from the area to start bringing down the high levels of infection in these areas.” So here they are arguing that the pilot culls are in fact to help reduce bTB. They’ve abandoned the line that they are solely to assess humaneness. We are therefore entitled to ask the question again. “Given that the cull is to test the efficiency of culling badgers in reducing bTB why on earth would you not want to know the incidence of bTB in the local badger population?” The data from the Randomised Badger Cull Trials (RBCT) are now 7 years old. The abiding and overwhelming suspicion remains that the absence of testing is motivated solely by a deep-seated fear that such testing would show minimal infection, perhaps even less than the 16% discovered in the RBCT.
What is also interesting about Defra’s latter blogpost is the appearance of the statement “The cull will be repeated for four years, which is what the science recommends to ensure we achieve a long-term benefit in reducing the level of disease.” No ifs. No buts. It WILL be repeated. Regardless of the results of this supposed pilot. Regardless of whether free-shooting is assessed as humane, the cull will go on. Regardless of the fact that the cull organisers will have no more idea of the incidence of bTB in the badger population that they have just tried to eradicate. Yet more evidence that this cull, its continuation and propagation to new areas has as much to do with science as the Flat Earth Society.
And talking of a lack of scientific rigour, the Government’s Chief Veterinary Officer has now admitted there are “no definitive criteria” for measuring how humane the current pilot operations are. So, again, “What is the point of the cull?”
Since my last blogpost we have also seen a steady trickle of botched kills. Badgers found shot on roads and elsewhere, clearly not in approved kill areas. This would suggest that either free-shooting is not proving to be a particularly humane method of culling, as badgers are running off to die or that there is a sizeable illegal badger cull going on, perhaps using the official cull as cover. The former explanation would be a further nail in the cull’s coffin, the latter requires a Police investigation. Defra insist, each time a shot badger is found away from a kill area, that it is nothing to do with the cull. But the speed of their denials and the fact that they don’t examine the carcasses is far too knee-jerk to be credible. Maybe the marksmen are telling Defra that every kill is clean, that each badger shot dies on the spot. But to swallow such assurances is naive and gullible. I will be enquiring of Avon & Somerset Police whether there are any active investigations into illegal badger shooting. If not, that would strongly suggest that these shot badgers are botched kills from the cull.
Something else I’ve learnt since my first blogpost is that in order to defray the costs of compensating farmers for infected cattle slaughtered due to TB , the meat from those animals is sold into the human food chain. The supermarkets apparently won’t have it but there’s every chance that the meat is getting into hospitals and schools. Now either there’s a major scandal here based on the fact that we are feeding ‘dangerously infected’ meat to some of the most vulnerable people in the country or there’s a major scandal here based on the fact that such a fuss is being made about an animal disease which has no impact on whether the meat can be eaten. Either way, you probably get the impression that I feel that there’s a major scandal here. The essential question is this: “How can it be acceptable to eat meat from cows with TB but not from cows that have been vaccinated against TB?” This is, of course, the line that we keep being fed by Defra, that the EU will not allow vaccinated meat into the foodchain. How long before we see Owen Paterson shoving a TB burger into one of his children’s mouths?
A further issue of concern surrounds the persistent allegations from cull protesters that the Police are acting as the security wing of the NFU. There have been allegations that the Police have been handing out warning leaflets produced by the NFU and that individuals have been temporarily detained on behalf of the NFU. I fully understand that there is likely to be exaggeration on both sides in this action but, if proven, such actions by the Police must be legally questionable and certainly very worrying. And what is all this policing costing? And what are Defra spending on social media monitoring? I feel some FOI requests coming on…..
Also of concern is Defra’s refusal to comply with the Information Commissioner’s ruling that they must release to the Humane Society information on the humaneness of the cull. Once again, we must ask “What have they got to hide?” It all adds to the sense that Defra are fully aware that their case has no scientific basis but that they are determined to press on for reasons that they are not prepared to divulge. I simply don’t accept that it is open to Government to operate in this way. Actions must be able to display sound logic even if we don’t agree with the aims. Government and politics is held in low enough esteem as it is without Government departments heading off on completely unjustified and unjustifiable flights of fancy.
One final thought. The cull has been so badly organised and the case for it is so flimsy, I am left wondering whether Defra has deliberately set it up to fail. This would give them the opportunity to say to the NFU “Look we tried. We set up the legal framework for you to cull badgers and you made a hash of it. So it won’t be rolled out elsewhere.” I wonder this because this shambles cannot possibly be the result of the best efforts of a major Government Department in one of the world’s biggest economies.
As I have said before, my approach to this issue is based on reason and logic. Policy must be based on sound evidence. These pilot badger culls are as far from a sound evidence base as any policy that I have seen. There is no chance that the Somerset and Gloucestershire pilots will be abandoned. They will inevitably be seen through to the end (in time if not numbers of culled badgers). But I think that with the continued application of pressure and careful dissection of Defra’s fatuous arguments, there is a very good chance that they will not be repeated. So, to the ‘Digital Badger Protection Force’, the Injured Badger Patrols and everyone else dedicated to ending this nonsense, keep it up, the direction of travel on this is all one way. Momentum is firmly against the cull.
- See more at: http://mikerigby.org/2013/09/27/badger-cull-2-update/#comment-619

Two weeks ago I wrote a blogpost setting out what I had learned about the pilot badger culls in the preceding few weeks. Previously I had not held a strong view on the subject and my interest had been piqued by a cull objector asking me if I knew that culled badgers were NOT to be tested for bTB. I doubted that this was true but eventually dragged out of Defra that it was in fact the case; there would be NO testing. I found this staggering and resolved to investigate further and the product was my blogpost. It received as many views in a weekend as my blog typically gets in 6 months so it’s clear that plenty of people feel strongly about this. As I say, two weeks have passed and so much new information has dripped out, I felt that a follow-up was required.
So what have we learned since my blogpost? First and foremost, we’ve learned that Defra is completely incapable of holding the line on the justification for the badger culls. Guy Robinson, Special Advisor to Owen Paterson, told me repeatedly that the lack of bTB testing on culled badgers was because the pilot culls are to test the humaneness of free shooting as a method of culling. This is backed up by Defra’s subsequent blogpost. But, as I pointed out in my first post on the subject, this is inconsistent with the requirement to cull 70% of the badgers in the pilot area. Remember, so important is it to do this that the pilot cull was postponed for a year. Many of the badger Twitterati –or the digital badger protection force, as I have come to think of them – have asked the valid question “If, as Defra insist, this cull is about assessing the humaneness of the method of culling, why do they need to kill 5,000 badgers? It doesn’t take 5,000 to work out whether marksmen can aim properly.” It’s a fair question and one I asked in my original blogpost. And herein lies the inherent confusion in Defra’s argument. When people ask Defra this question, “Why kill 5,000 to test the method?” Defra falls back on the argument that “Natural England have licensed culls in Somerset and Gloucestershire to remove badgers from the area to start bringing down the high levels of infection in these areas.” So here they are arguing that the pilot culls are in fact to help reduce bTB. They’ve abandoned the line that they are solely to assess humaneness. We are therefore entitled to ask the question again. “Given that the cull is to test the efficiency of culling badgers in reducing bTB why on earth would you not want to know the incidence of bTB in the local badger population?” The data from the Randomised Badger Cull Trials (RBCT) are now 7 years old. The abiding and overwhelming suspicion remains that the absence of testing is motivated solely by a deep-seated fear that such testing would show minimal infection, perhaps even less than the 16% discovered in the RBCT.
What is also interesting about Defra’s latter blogpost is the appearance of the statement “The cull will be repeated for four years, which is what the science recommends to ensure we achieve a long-term benefit in reducing the level of disease.” No ifs. No buts. It WILL be repeated. Regardless of the results of this supposed pilot. Regardless of whether free-shooting is assessed as humane, the cull will go on. Regardless of the fact that the cull organisers will have no more idea of the incidence of bTB in the badger population that they have just tried to eradicate. Yet more evidence that this cull, its continuation and propagation to new areas has as much to do with science as the Flat Earth Society.
And talking of a lack of scientific rigour, the Government’s Chief Veterinary Officer has now admitted there are “no definitive criteria” for measuring how humane the current pilot operations are. So, again, “What is the point of the cull?”
Since my last blogpost we have also seen a steady trickle of botched kills. Badgers found shot on roads and elsewhere, clearly not in approved kill areas. This would suggest that either free-shooting is not proving to be a particularly humane method of culling, as badgers are running off to die or that there is a sizeable illegal badger cull going on, perhaps using the official cull as cover. The former explanation would be a further nail in the cull’s coffin, the latter requires a Police investigation. Defra insist, each time a shot badger is found away from a kill area, that it is nothing to do with the cull. But the speed of their denials and the fact that they don’t examine the carcasses is far too knee-jerk to be credible. Maybe the marksmen are telling Defra that every kill is clean, that each badger shot dies on the spot. But to swallow such assurances is naive and gullible. I will be enquiring of Avon & Somerset Police whether there are any active investigations into illegal badger shooting. If not, that would strongly suggest that these shot badgers are botched kills from the cull.
Something else I’ve learnt since my first blogpost is that in order to defray the costs of compensating farmers for infected cattle slaughtered due to TB , the meat from those animals is sold into the human food chain. The supermarkets apparently won’t have it but there’s every chance that the meat is getting into hospitals and schools. Now either there’s a major scandal here based on the fact that we are feeding ‘dangerously infected’ meat to some of the most vulnerable people in the country or there’s a major scandal here based on the fact that such a fuss is being made about an animal disease which has no impact on whether the meat can be eaten. Either way, you probably get the impression that I feel that there’s a major scandal here. The essential question is this: “How can it be acceptable to eat meat from cows with TB but not from cows that have been vaccinated against TB?” This is, of course, the line that we keep being fed by Defra, that the EU will not allow vaccinated meat into the foodchain. How long before we see Owen Paterson shoving a TB burger into one of his children’s mouths?
A further issue of concern surrounds the persistent allegations from cull protesters that the Police are acting as the security wing of the NFU. There have been allegations that the Police have been handing out warning leaflets produced by the NFU and that individuals have been temporarily detained on behalf of the NFU. I fully understand that there is likely to be exaggeration on both sides in this action but, if proven, such actions by the Police must be legally questionable and certainly very worrying. And what is all this policing costing? And what are Defra spending on social media monitoring? I feel some FOI requests coming on…..
Also of concern is Defra’s refusal to comply with the Information Commissioner’s ruling that they must release to the Humane Society information on the humaneness of the cull. Once again, we must ask “What have they got to hide?” It all adds to the sense that Defra are fully aware that their case has no scientific basis but that they are determined to press on for reasons that they are not prepared to divulge. I simply don’t accept that it is open to Government to operate in this way. Actions must be able to display sound logic even if we don’t agree with the aims. Government and politics is held in low enough esteem as it is without Government departments heading off on completely unjustified and unjustifiable flights of fancy.
One final thought. The cull has been so badly organised and the case for it is so flimsy, I am left wondering whether Defra has deliberately set it up to fail. This would give them the opportunity to say to the NFU “Look we tried. We set up the legal framework for you to cull badgers and you made a hash of it. So it won’t be rolled out elsewhere.” I wonder this because this shambles cannot possibly be the result of the best efforts of a major Government Department in one of the world’s biggest economies.
As I have said before, my approach to this issue is based on reason and logic. Policy must be based on sound evidence. These pilot badger culls are as far from a sound evidence base as any policy that I have seen. There is no chance that the Somerset and Gloucestershire pilots will be abandoned. They will inevitably be seen through to the end (in time if not numbers of culled badgers). But I think that with the continued application of pressure and careful dissection of Defra’s fatuous arguments, there is a very good chance that they will not be repeated. So, to the ‘Digital Badger Protection Force’, the Injured Badger Patrols and everyone else dedicated to ending this nonsense, keep it up, the direction of travel on this is all one way. Momentum is firmly against the cull.
- See more at: http://mikerigby.org/2013/09/27/badger-cull-2-update/#comment-619

Two weeks ago I wrote a blogpost setting out what I had learned about the pilot badger culls in the preceding few weeks. Previously I had not held a strong view on the subject and my interest had been piqued by a cull objector asking me if I knew that culled badgers were NOT to be tested for bTB. I doubted that this was true but eventually dragged out of Defra that it was in fact the case; there would be NO testing. I found this staggering and resolved to investigate further and the product was my blogpost. It received as many views in a weekend as my blog typically gets in 6 months so it’s clear that plenty of people feel strongly about this. As I say, two weeks have passed and so much new information has dripped out, I felt that a follow-up was required.
So what have we learned since my blogpost? First and foremost, we’ve learned that Defra is completely incapable of holding the line on the justification for the badger culls. Guy Robinson, Special Advisor to Owen Paterson, told me repeatedly that the lack of bTB testing on culled badgers was because the pilot culls are to test the humaneness of free shooting as a method of culling. This is backed up by Defra’s subsequent blogpost. But, as I pointed out in my first post on the subject, this is inconsistent with the requirement to cull 70% of the badgers in the pilot area. Remember, so important is it to do this that the pilot cull was postponed for a year. Many of the badger Twitterati –or the digital badger protection force, as I have come to think of them – have asked the valid question “If, as Defra insist, this cull is about assessing the humaneness of the method of culling, why do they need to kill 5,000 badgers? It doesn’t take 5,000 to work out whether marksmen can aim properly.” It’s a fair question and one I asked in my original blogpost. And herein lies the inherent confusion in Defra’s argument. When people ask Defra this question, “Why kill 5,000 to test the method?” Defra falls back on the argument that “Natural England have licensed culls in Somerset and Gloucestershire to remove badgers from the area to start bringing down the high levels of infection in these areas.” So here they are arguing that the pilot culls are in fact to help reduce bTB. They’ve abandoned the line that they are solely to assess humaneness. We are therefore entitled to ask the question again. “Given that the cull is to test the efficiency of culling badgers in reducing bTB why on earth would you not want to know the incidence of bTB in the local badger population?” The data from the Randomised Badger Cull Trials (RBCT) are now 7 years old. The abiding and overwhelming suspicion remains that the absence of testing is motivated solely by a deep-seated fear that such testing would show minimal infection, perhaps even less than the 16% discovered in the RBCT.
What is also interesting about Defra’s latter blogpost is the appearance of the statement “The cull will be repeated for four years, which is what the science recommends to ensure we achieve a long-term benefit in reducing the level of disease.” No ifs. No buts. It WILL be repeated. Regardless of the results of this supposed pilot. Regardless of whether free-shooting is assessed as humane, the cull will go on. Regardless of the fact that the cull organisers will have no more idea of the incidence of bTB in the badger population that they have just tried to eradicate. Yet more evidence that this cull, its continuation and propagation to new areas has as much to do with science as the Flat Earth Society.
And talking of a lack of scientific rigour, the Government’s Chief Veterinary Officer has now admitted there are “no definitive criteria” for measuring how humane the current pilot operations are. So, again, “What is the point of the cull?”
Since my last blogpost we have also seen a steady trickle of botched kills. Badgers found shot on roads and elsewhere, clearly not in approved kill areas. This would suggest that either free-shooting is not proving to be a particularly humane method of culling, as badgers are running off to die or that there is a sizeable illegal badger cull going on, perhaps using the official cull as cover. The former explanation would be a further nail in the cull’s coffin, the latter requires a Police investigation. Defra insist, each time a shot badger is found away from a kill area, that it is nothing to do with the cull. But the speed of their denials and the fact that they don’t examine the carcasses is far too knee-jerk to be credible. Maybe the marksmen are telling Defra that every kill is clean, that each badger shot dies on the spot. But to swallow such assurances is naive and gullible. I will be enquiring of Avon & Somerset Police whether there are any active investigations into illegal badger shooting. If not, that would strongly suggest that these shot badgers are botched kills from the cull.
Something else I’ve learnt since my first blogpost is that in order to defray the costs of compensating farmers for infected cattle slaughtered due to TB , the meat from those animals is sold into the human food chain. The supermarkets apparently won’t have it but there’s every chance that the meat is getting into hospitals and schools. Now either there’s a major scandal here based on the fact that we are feeding ‘dangerously infected’ meat to some of the most vulnerable people in the country or there’s a major scandal here based on the fact that such a fuss is being made about an animal disease which has no impact on whether the meat can be eaten. Either way, you probably get the impression that I feel that there’s a major scandal here. The essential question is this: “How can it be acceptable to eat meat from cows with TB but not from cows that have been vaccinated against TB?” This is, of course, the line that we keep being fed by Defra, that the EU will not allow vaccinated meat into the foodchain. How long before we see Owen Paterson shoving a TB burger into one of his children’s mouths?
A further issue of concern surrounds the persistent allegations from cull protesters that the Police are acting as the security wing of the NFU. There have been allegations that the Police have been handing out warning leaflets produced by the NFU and that individuals have been temporarily detained on behalf of the NFU. I fully understand that there is likely to be exaggeration on both sides in this action but, if proven, such actions by the Police must be legally questionable and certainly very worrying. And what is all this policing costing? And what are Defra spending on social media monitoring? I feel some FOI requests coming on…..
Also of concern is Defra’s refusal to comply with the Information Commissioner’s ruling that they must release to the Humane Society information on the humaneness of the cull. Once again, we must ask “What have they got to hide?” It all adds to the sense that Defra are fully aware that their case has no scientific basis but that they are determined to press on for reasons that they are not prepared to divulge. I simply don’t accept that it is open to Government to operate in this way. Actions must be able to display sound logic even if we don’t agree with the aims. Government and politics is held in low enough esteem as it is without Government departments heading off on completely unjustified and unjustifiable flights of fancy.
One final thought. The cull has been so badly organised and the case for it is so flimsy, I am left wondering whether Defra has deliberately set it up to fail. This would give them the opportunity to say to the NFU “Look we tried. We set up the legal framework for you to cull badgers and you made a hash of it. So it won’t be rolled out elsewhere.” I wonder this because this shambles cannot possibly be the result of the best efforts of a major Government Department in one of the world’s biggest economies.
As I have said before, my approach to this issue is based on reason and logic. Policy must be based on sound evidence. These pilot badger culls are as far from a sound evidence base as any policy that I have seen. There is no chance that the Somerset and Gloucestershire pilots will be abandoned. They will inevitably be seen through to the end (in time if not numbers of culled badgers). But I think that with the continued application of pressure and careful dissection of Defra’s fatuous arguments, there is a very good chance that they will not be repeated. So, to the ‘Digital Badger Protection Force’, the Injured Badger Patrols and everyone else dedicated to ending this nonsense, keep it up, the direction of travel on this is all one way. Momentum is firmly against the cull.
- See more at: http://mikerigby.org/2013/09/27/badger-cull-2-update/#comment-619

Two weeks ago I wrote a blogpost setting out what I had learned about the pilot badger culls in the preceding few weeks. Previously I had not held a strong view on the subject and my interest had been piqued by a cull objector asking me if I knew that culled badgers were NOT to be tested for bTB. I doubted that this was true but eventually dragged out of Defra that it was in fact the case; there would be NO testing. I found this staggering and resolved to investigate further and the product was my blogpost. It received as many views in a weekend as my blog typically gets in 6 months so it’s clear that plenty of people feel strongly about this. As I say, two weeks have passed and so much new information has dripped out, I felt that a follow-up was required.
So what have we learned since my blogpost? First and foremost, we’ve learned that Defra is completely incapable of holding the line on the justification for the badger culls. Guy Robinson, Special Advisor to Owen Paterson, told me repeatedly that the lack of bTB testing on culled badgers was because the pilot culls are to test the humaneness of free shooting as a method of culling. This is backed up by Defra’s subsequent blogpost. But, as I pointed out in my first post on the subject, this is inconsistent with the requirement to cull 70% of the badgers in the pilot area. Remember, so important is it to do this that the pilot cull was postponed for a year. Many of the badger Twitterati –or the digital badger protection force, as I have come to think of them – have asked the valid question “If, as Defra insist, this cull is about assessing the humaneness of the method of culling, why do they need to kill 5,000 badgers? It doesn’t take 5,000 to work out whether marksmen can aim properly.” It’s a fair question and one I asked in my original blogpost. And herein lies the inherent confusion in Defra’s argument. When people ask Defra this question, “Why kill 5,000 to test the method?” Defra falls back on the argument that “Natural England have licensed culls in Somerset and Gloucestershire to remove badgers from the area to start bringing down the high levels of infection in these areas.” So here they are arguing that the pilot culls are in fact to help reduce bTB. They’ve abandoned the line that they are solely to assess humaneness. We are therefore entitled to ask the question again. “Given that the cull is to test the efficiency of culling badgers in reducing bTB why on earth would you not want to know the incidence of bTB in the local badger population?” The data from the Randomised Badger Cull Trials (RBCT) are now 7 years old. The abiding and overwhelming suspicion remains that the absence of testing is motivated solely by a deep-seated fear that such testing would show minimal infection, perhaps even less than the 16% discovered in the RBCT.
What is also interesting about Defra’s latter blogpost is the appearance of the statement “The cull will be repeated for four years, which is what the science recommends to ensure we achieve a long-term benefit in reducing the level of disease.” No ifs. No buts. It WILL be repeated. Regardless of the results of this supposed pilot. Regardless of whether free-shooting is assessed as humane, the cull will go on. Regardless of the fact that the cull organisers will have no more idea of the incidence of bTB in the badger population that they have just tried to eradicate. Yet more evidence that this cull, its continuation and propagation to new areas has as much to do with science as the Flat Earth Society.
And talking of a lack of scientific rigour, the Government’s Chief Veterinary Officer has now admitted there are “no definitive criteria” for measuring how humane the current pilot operations are. So, again, “What is the point of the cull?”
Since my last blogpost we have also seen a steady trickle of botched kills. Badgers found shot on roads and elsewhere, clearly not in approved kill areas. This would suggest that either free-shooting is not proving to be a particularly humane method of culling, as badgers are running off to die or that there is a sizeable illegal badger cull going on, perhaps using the official cull as cover. The former explanation would be a further nail in the cull’s coffin, the latter requires a Police investigation. Defra insist, each time a shot badger is found away from a kill area, that it is nothing to do with the cull. But the speed of their denials and the fact that they don’t examine the carcasses is far too knee-jerk to be credible. Maybe the marksmen are telling Defra that every kill is clean, that each badger shot dies on the spot. But to swallow such assurances is naive and gullible. I will be enquiring of Avon & Somerset Police whether there are any active investigations into illegal badger shooting. If not, that would strongly suggest that these shot badgers are botched kills from the cull.
Something else I’ve learnt since my first blogpost is that in order to defray the costs of compensating farmers for infected cattle slaughtered due to TB , the meat from those animals is sold into the human food chain. The supermarkets apparently won’t have it but there’s every chance that the meat is getting into hospitals and schools. Now either there’s a major scandal here based on the fact that we are feeding ‘dangerously infected’ meat to some of the most vulnerable people in the country or there’s a major scandal here based on the fact that such a fuss is being made about an animal disease which has no impact on whether the meat can be eaten. Either way, you probably get the impression that I feel that there’s a major scandal here. The essential question is this: “How can it be acceptable to eat meat from cows with TB but not from cows that have been vaccinated against TB?” This is, of course, the line that we keep being fed by Defra, that the EU will not allow vaccinated meat into the foodchain. How long before we see Owen Paterson shoving a TB burger into one of his children’s mouths?
A further issue of concern surrounds the persistent allegations from cull protesters that the Police are acting as the security wing of the NFU. There have been allegations that the Police have been handing out warning leaflets produced by the NFU and that individuals have been temporarily detained on behalf of the NFU. I fully understand that there is likely to be exaggeration on both sides in this action but, if proven, such actions by the Police must be legally questionable and certainly very worrying. And what is all this policing costing? And what are Defra spending on social media monitoring? I feel some FOI requests coming on…..
Also of concern is Defra’s refusal to comply with the Information Commissioner’s ruling that they must release to the Humane Society information on the humaneness of the cull. Once again, we must ask “What have they got to hide?” It all adds to the sense that Defra are fully aware that their case has no scientific basis but that they are determined to press on for reasons that they are not prepared to divulge. I simply don’t accept that it is open to Government to operate in this way. Actions must be able to display sound logic even if we don’t agree with the aims. Government and politics is held in low enough esteem as it is without Government departments heading off on completely unjustified and unjustifiable flights of fancy.
One final thought. The cull has been so badly organised and the case for it is so flimsy, I am left wondering whether Defra has deliberately set it up to fail. This would give them the opportunity to say to the NFU “Look we tried. We set up the legal framework for you to cull badgers and you made a hash of it. So it won’t be rolled out elsewhere.” I wonder this because this shambles cannot possibly be the result of the best efforts of a major Government Department in one of the world’s biggest economies.
As I have said before, my approach to this issue is based on reason and logic. Policy must be based on sound evidence. These pilot badger culls are as far from a sound evidence base as any policy that I have seen. There is no chance that the Somerset and Gloucestershire pilots will be abandoned. They will inevitably be seen through to the end (in time if not numbers of culled badgers). But I think that with the continued application of pressure and careful dissection of Defra’s fatuous arguments, there is a very good chance that they will not be repeated. So, to the ‘Digital Badger Protection Force’, the Injured Badger Patrols and everyone else dedicated to ending this nonsense, keep it up, the direction of travel on this is all one way. Momentum is firmly against the cull.
- See more at: http://mikerigby.org/2013/09/27/badger-cull-2-update/#comment-619

Two weeks ago I wrote a blogpost setting out what I had learned about the pilot badger culls in the preceding few weeks. Previously I had not held a strong view on the subject and my interest had been piqued by a cull objector asking me if I knew that culled badgers were NOT to be tested for bTB. I doubted that this was true but eventually dragged out of Defra that it was in fact the case; there would be NO testing. I found this staggering and resolved to investigate further and the product was my blogpost. It received as many views in a weekend as my blog typically gets in 6 months so it’s clear that plenty of people feel strongly about this. As I say, two weeks have passed and so much new information has dripped out, I felt that a follow-up was required.
So what have we learned since my blogpost? First and foremost, we’ve learned that Defra is completely incapable of holding the line on the justification for the badger culls. Guy Robinson, Special Advisor to Owen Paterson, told me repeatedly that the lack of bTB testing on culled badgers was because the pilot culls are to test the humaneness of free shooting as a method of culling. This is backed up by Defra’s subsequent blogpost. But, as I pointed out in my first post on the subject, this is inconsistent with the requirement to cull 70% of the badgers in the pilot area. Remember, so important is it to do this that the pilot cull was postponed for a year. Many of the badger Twitterati –or the digital badger protection force, as I have come to think of them – have asked the valid question “If, as Defra insist, this cull is about assessing the humaneness of the method of culling, why do they need to kill 5,000 badgers? It doesn’t take 5,000 to work out whether marksmen can aim properly.” It’s a fair question and one I asked in my original blogpost. And herein lies the inherent confusion in Defra’s argument. When people ask Defra this question, “Why kill 5,000 to test the method?” Defra falls back on the argument that “Natural England have licensed culls in Somerset and Gloucestershire to remove badgers from the area to start bringing down the high levels of infection in these areas.” So here they are arguing that the pilot culls are in fact to help reduce bTB. They’ve abandoned the line that they are solely to assess humaneness. We are therefore entitled to ask the question again. “Given that the cull is to test the efficiency of culling badgers in reducing bTB why on earth would you not want to know the incidence of bTB in the local badger population?” The data from the Randomised Badger Cull Trials (RBCT) are now 7 years old. The abiding and overwhelming suspicion remains that the absence of testing is motivated solely by a deep-seated fear that such testing would show minimal infection, perhaps even less than the 16% discovered in the RBCT.
What is also interesting about Defra’s latter blogpost is the appearance of the statement “The cull will be repeated for four years, which is what the science recommends to ensure we achieve a long-term benefit in reducing the level of disease.” No ifs. No buts. It WILL be repeated. Regardless of the results of this supposed pilot. Regardless of whether free-shooting is assessed as humane, the cull will go on. Regardless of the fact that the cull organisers will have no more idea of the incidence of bTB in the badger population that they have just tried to eradicate. Yet more evidence that this cull, its continuation and propagation to new areas has as much to do with science as the Flat Earth Society.
And talking of a lack of scientific rigour, the Government’s Chief Veterinary Officer has now admitted there are “no definitive criteria” for measuring how humane the current pilot operations are. So, again, “What is the point of the cull?”
Since my last blogpost we have also seen a steady trickle of botched kills. Badgers found shot on roads and elsewhere, clearly not in approved kill areas. This would suggest that either free-shooting is not proving to be a particularly humane method of culling, as badgers are running off to die or that there is a sizeable illegal badger cull going on, perhaps using the official cull as cover. The former explanation would be a further nail in the cull’s coffin, the latter requires a Police investigation. Defra insist, each time a shot badger is found away from a kill area, that it is nothing to do with the cull. But the speed of their denials and the fact that they don’t examine the carcasses is far too knee-jerk to be credible. Maybe the marksmen are telling Defra that every kill is clean, that each badger shot dies on the spot. But to swallow such assurances is naive and gullible. I will be enquiring of Avon & Somerset Police whether there are any active investigations into illegal badger shooting. If not, that would strongly suggest that these shot badgers are botched kills from the cull.
Something else I’ve learnt since my first blogpost is that in order to defray the costs of compensating farmers for infected cattle slaughtered due to TB , the meat from those animals is sold into the human food chain. The supermarkets apparently won’t have it but there’s every chance that the meat is getting into hospitals and schools. Now either there’s a major scandal here based on the fact that we are feeding ‘dangerously infected’ meat to some of the most vulnerable people in the country or there’s a major scandal here based on the fact that such a fuss is being made about an animal disease which has no impact on whether the meat can be eaten. Either way, you probably get the impression that I feel that there’s a major scandal here. The essential question is this: “How can it be acceptable to eat meat from cows with TB but not from cows that have been vaccinated against TB?” This is, of course, the line that we keep being fed by Defra, that the EU will not allow vaccinated meat into the foodchain. How long before we see Owen Paterson shoving a TB burger into one of his children’s mouths?
A further issue of concern surrounds the persistent allegations from cull protesters that the Police are acting as the security wing of the NFU. There have been allegations that the Police have been handing out warning leaflets produced by the NFU and that individuals have been temporarily detained on behalf of the NFU. I fully understand that there is likely to be exaggeration on both sides in this action but, if proven, such actions by the Police must be legally questionable and certainly very worrying. And what is all this policing costing? And what are Defra spending on social media monitoring? I feel some FOI requests coming on…..
Also of concern is Defra’s refusal to comply with the Information Commissioner’s ruling that they must release to the Humane Society information on the humaneness of the cull. Once again, we must ask “What have they got to hide?” It all adds to the sense that Defra are fully aware that their case has no scientific basis but that they are determined to press on for reasons that they are not prepared to divulge. I simply don’t accept that it is open to Government to operate in this way. Actions must be able to display sound logic even if we don’t agree with the aims. Government and politics is held in low enough esteem as it is without Government departments heading off on completely unjustified and unjustifiable flights of fancy.
One final thought. The cull has been so badly organised and the case for it is so flimsy, I am left wondering whether Defra has deliberately set it up to fail. This would give them the opportunity to say to the NFU “Look we tried. We set up the legal framework for you to cull badgers and you made a hash of it. So it won’t be rolled out elsewhere.” I wonder this because this shambles cannot possibly be the result of the best efforts of a major Government Department in one of the world’s biggest economies.
As I have said before, my approach to this issue is based on reason and logic. Policy must be based on sound evidence. These pilot badger culls are as far from a sound evidence base as any policy that I have seen. There is no chance that the Somerset and Gloucestershire pilots will be abandoned. They will inevitably be seen through to the end (in time if not numbers of culled badgers). But I think that with the continued application of pressure and careful dissection of Defra’s fatuous arguments, there is a very good chance that they will not be repeated. So, to the ‘Digital Badger Protection Force’, the Injured Badger Patrols and everyone else dedicated to ending this nonsense, keep it up, the direction of travel on this is all one way. Momentum is firmly against the cull.
- See more at: http://mikerigby.org/2013/09/27/badger-cull-2-update/#comment-619

Two weeks ago I wrote a blogpost setting out what I had learned about the pilot badger culls in the preceding few weeks. Previously I had not held a strong view on the subject and my interest had been piqued by a cull objector asking me if I knew that culled badgers were NOT to be tested for bTB. I doubted that this was true but eventually dragged out of Defra that it was in fact the case; there would be NO testing. I found this staggering and resolved to investigate further and the product was my blogpost. It received as many views in a weekend as my blog typically gets in 6 months so it’s clear that plenty of people feel strongly about this. As I say, two weeks have passed and so much new information has dripped out, I felt that a follow-up was required.
So what have we learned since my blogpost? First and foremost, we’ve learned that Defra is completely incapable of holding the line on the justification for the badger culls. Guy Robinson, Special Advisor to Owen Paterson, told me repeatedly that the lack of bTB testing on culled badgers was because the pilot culls are to test the humaneness of free shooting as a method of culling. This is backed up by Defra’s subsequent blogpost. But, as I pointed out in my first post on the subject, this is inconsistent with the requirement to cull 70% of the badgers in the pilot area. Remember, so important is it to do this that the pilot cull was postponed for a year. Many of the badger Twitterati –or the digital badger protection force, as I have come to think of them – have asked the valid question “If, as Defra insist, this cull is about assessing the humaneness of the method of culling, why do they need to kill 5,000 badgers? It doesn’t take 5,000 to work out whether marksmen can aim properly.” It’s a fair question and one I asked in my original blogpost. And herein lies the inherent confusion in Defra’s argument. When people ask Defra this question, “Why kill 5,000 to test the method?” Defra falls back on the argument that “Natural England have licensed culls in Somerset and Gloucestershire to remove badgers from the area to start bringing down the high levels of infection in these areas.” So here they are arguing that the pilot culls are in fact to help reduce bTB. They’ve abandoned the line that they are solely to assess humaneness. We are therefore entitled to ask the question again. “Given that the cull is to test the efficiency of culling badgers in reducing bTB why on earth would you not want to know the incidence of bTB in the local badger population?” The data from the Randomised Badger Cull Trials (RBCT) are now 7 years old. The abiding and overwhelming suspicion remains that the absence of testing is motivated solely by a deep-seated fear that such testing would show minimal infection, perhaps even less than the 16% discovered in the RBCT.
What is also interesting about Defra’s latter blogpost is the appearance of the statement “The cull will be repeated for four years, which is what the science recommends to ensure we achieve a long-term benefit in reducing the level of disease.” No ifs. No buts. It WILL be repeated. Regardless of the results of this supposed pilot. Regardless of whether free-shooting is assessed as humane, the cull will go on. Regardless of the fact that the cull organisers will have no more idea of the incidence of bTB in the badger population that they have just tried to eradicate. Yet more evidence that this cull, its continuation and propagation to new areas has as much to do with science as the Flat Earth Society.
And talking of a lack of scientific rigour, the Government’s Chief Veterinary Officer has now admitted there are “no definitive criteria” for measuring how humane the current pilot operations are. So, again, “What is the point of the cull?”
Since my last blogpost we have also seen a steady trickle of botched kills. Badgers found shot on roads and elsewhere, clearly not in approved kill areas. This would suggest that either free-shooting is not proving to be a particularly humane method of culling, as badgers are running off to die or that there is a sizeable illegal badger cull going on, perhaps using the official cull as cover. The former explanation would be a further nail in the cull’s coffin, the latter requires a Police investigation. Defra insist, each time a shot badger is found away from a kill area, that it is nothing to do with the cull. But the speed of their denials and the fact that they don’t examine the carcasses is far too knee-jerk to be credible. Maybe the marksmen are telling Defra that every kill is clean, that each badger shot dies on the spot. But to swallow such assurances is naive and gullible. I will be enquiring of Avon & Somerset Police whether there are any active investigations into illegal badger shooting. If not, that would strongly suggest that these shot badgers are botched kills from the cull.
Something else I’ve learnt since my first blogpost is that in order to defray the costs of compensating farmers for infected cattle slaughtered due to TB , the meat from those animals is sold into the human food chain. The supermarkets apparently won’t have it but there’s every chance that the meat is getting into hospitals and schools. Now either there’s a major scandal here based on the fact that we are feeding ‘dangerously infected’ meat to some of the most vulnerable people in the country or there’s a major scandal here based on the fact that such a fuss is being made about an animal disease which has no impact on whether the meat can be eaten. Either way, you probably get the impression that I feel that there’s a major scandal here. The essential question is this: “How can it be acceptable to eat meat from cows with TB but not from cows that have been vaccinated against TB?” This is, of course, the line that we keep being fed by Defra, that the EU will not allow vaccinated meat into the foodchain. How long before we see Owen Paterson shoving a TB burger into one of his children’s mouths?
A further issue of concern surrounds the persistent allegations from cull protesters that the Police are acting as the security wing of the NFU. There have been allegations that the Police have been handing out warning leaflets produced by the NFU and that individuals have been temporarily detained on behalf of the NFU. I fully understand that there is likely to be exaggeration on both sides in this action but, if proven, such actions by the Police must be legally questionable and certainly very worrying. And what is all this policing costing? And what are Defra spending on social media monitoring? I feel some FOI requests coming on…..
Also of concern is Defra’s refusal to comply with the Information Commissioner’s ruling that they must release to the Humane Society information on the humaneness of the cull. Once again, we must ask “What have they got to hide?” It all adds to the sense that Defra are fully aware that their case has no scientific basis but that they are determined to press on for reasons that they are not prepared to divulge. I simply don’t accept that it is open to Government to operate in this way. Actions must be able to display sound logic even if we don’t agree with the aims. Government and politics is held in low enough esteem as it is without Government departments heading off on completely unjustified and unjustifiable flights of fancy.
One final thought. The cull has been so badly organised and the case for it is so flimsy, I am left wondering whether Defra has deliberately set it up to fail. This would give them the opportunity to say to the NFU “Look we tried. We set up the legal framework for you to cull badgers and you made a hash of it. So it won’t be rolled out elsewhere.” I wonder this because this shambles cannot possibly be the result of the best efforts of a major Government Department in one of the world’s biggest economies.
As I have said before, my approach to this issue is based on reason and logic. Policy must be based on sound evidence. These pilot badger culls are as far from a sound evidence base as any policy that I have seen. There is no chance that the Somerset and Gloucestershire pilots will be abandoned. They will inevitably be seen through to the end (in time if not numbers of culled badgers). But I think that with the continued application of pressure and careful dissection of Defra’s fatuous arguments, there is a very good chance that they will not be repeated. So, to the ‘Digital Badger Protection Force’, the Injured Badger Patrols and everyone else dedicated to ending this nonsense, keep it up, the direction of travel on this is all one way. Momentum is firmly against the cull.
- See more at: http://mikerigby.org/2013/09/27/badger-cull-2-update/#comment-61

Two weeks ago I wrote a blogpost setting out what I had learned about the pilot badger culls in the preceding few weeks. Previously I had not held a strong view on the subject and my interest had been piqued by a cull objector asking me if I knew that culled badgers were NOT to be tested for bTB. I doubted that this was true but eventually dragged out of Defra that it was in fact the case; there would be NO testing. I found this staggering and resolved to investigate further and the product was my blogpost. It received as many views in a weekend as my blog typically gets in 6 months so it’s clear that plenty of people feel strongly about this. As I say, two weeks have passed and so much new information has dripped out, I felt that a follow-up was required.
So what have we learned since my blogpost? First and foremost, we’ve learned that Defra is completely incapable of holding the line on the justification for the badger culls. Guy Robinson, Special Advisor to Owen Paterson, told me repeatedly that the lack of bTB testing on culled badgers was because the pilot culls are to test the humaneness of free shooting as a method of culling. This is backed up by Defra’s subsequent blogpost. But, as I pointed out in my first post on the subject, this is inconsistent with the requirement to cull 70% of the badgers in the pilot area. Remember, so important is it to do this that the pilot cull was postponed for a year. Many of the badger Twitterati –or the digital badger protection force, as I have come to think of them – have asked the valid question “If, as Defra insist, this cull is about assessing the humaneness of the method of culling, why do they need to kill 5,000 badgers? It doesn’t take 5,000 to work out whether marksmen can aim properly.” It’s a fair question and one I asked in my original blogpost. And herein lies the inherent confusion in Defra’s argument. When people ask Defra this question, “Why kill 5,000 to test the method?” Defra falls back on the argument that “Natural England have licensed culls in Somerset and Gloucestershire to remove badgers from the area to start bringing down the high levels of infection in these areas.” So here they are arguing that the pilot culls are in fact to help reduce bTB. They’ve abandoned the line that they are solely to assess humaneness. We are therefore entitled to ask the question again. “Given that the cull is to test the efficiency of culling badgers in reducing bTB why on earth would you not want to know the incidence of bTB in the local badger population?” The data from the Randomised Badger Cull Trials (RBCT) are now 7 years old. The abiding and overwhelming suspicion remains that the absence of testing is motivated solely by a deep-seated fear that such testing would show minimal infection, perhaps even less than the 16% discovered in the RBCT.
What is also interesting about Defra’s latter blogpost is the appearance of the statement “The cull will be repeated for four years, which is what the science recommends to ensure we achieve a long-term benefit in reducing the level of disease.” No ifs. No buts. It WILL be repeated. Regardless of the results of this supposed pilot. Regardless of whether free-shooting is assessed as humane, the cull will go on. Regardless of the fact that the cull organisers will have no more idea of the incidence of bTB in the badger population that they have just tried to eradicate. Yet more evidence that this cull, its continuation and propagation to new areas has as much to do with science as the Flat Earth Society.
And talking of a lack of scientific rigour, the Government’s Chief Veterinary Officer has now admitted there are “no definitive criteria” for measuring how humane the current pilot operations are. So, again, “What is the point of the cull?”
Since my last blogpost we have also seen a steady trickle of botched kills. Badgers found shot on roads and elsewhere, clearly not in approved kill areas. This would suggest that either free-shooting is not proving to be a particularly humane method of culling, as badgers are running off to die or that there is a sizeable illegal badger cull going on, perhaps using the official cull as cover. The former explanation would be a further nail in the cull’s coffin, the latter requires a Police investigation. Defra insist, each time a shot badger is found away from a kill area, that it is nothing to do with the cull. But the speed of their denials and the fact that they don’t examine the carcasses is far too knee-jerk to be credible. Maybe the marksmen are telling Defra that every kill is clean, that each badger shot dies on the spot. But to swallow such assurances is naive and gullible. I will be enquiring of Avon & Somerset Police whether there are any active investigations into illegal badger shooting. If not, that would strongly suggest that these shot badgers are botched kills from the cull.
Something else I’ve learnt since my first blogpost is that in order to defray the costs of compensating farmers for infected cattle slaughtered due to TB , the meat from those animals is sold into the human food chain. The supermarkets apparently won’t have it but there’s every chance that the meat is getting into hospitals and schools. Now either there’s a major scandal here based on the fact that we are feeding ‘dangerously infected’ meat to some of the most vulnerable people in the country or there’s a major scandal here based on the fact that such a fuss is being made about an animal disease which has no impact on whether the meat can be eaten. Either way, you probably get the impression that I feel that there’s a major scandal here. The essential question is this: “How can it be acceptable to eat meat from cows with TB but not from cows that have been vaccinated against TB?” This is, of course, the line that we keep being fed by Defra, that the EU will not allow vaccinated meat into the foodchain. How long before we see Owen Paterson shoving a TB burger into one of his children’s mouths?
A further issue of concern surrounds the persistent allegations from cull protesters that the Police are acting as the security wing of the NFU. There have been allegations that the Police have been handing out warning leaflets produced by the NFU and that individuals have been temporarily detained on behalf of the NFU. I fully understand that there is likely to be exaggeration on both sides in this action but, if proven, such actions by the Police must be legally questionable and certainly very worrying. And what is all this policing costing? And what are Defra spending on social media monitoring? I feel some FOI requests coming on…..
Also of concern is Defra’s refusal to comply with the Information Commissioner’s ruling that they must release to the Humane Society information on the humaneness of the cull. Once again, we must ask “What have they got to hide?” It all adds to the sense that Defra are fully aware that their case has no scientific basis but that they are determined to press on for reasons that they are not prepared to divulge. I simply don’t accept that it is open to Government to operate in this way. Actions must be able to display sound logic even if we don’t agree with the aims. Government and politics is held in low enough esteem as it is without Government departments heading off on completely unjustified and unjustifiable flights of fancy.
One final thought. The cull has been so badly organised and the case for it is so flimsy, I am left wondering whether Defra has deliberately set it up to fail. This would give them the opportunity to say to the NFU “Look we tried. We set up the legal framework for you to cull badgers and you made a hash of it. So it won’t be rolled out elsewhere.” I wonder this because this shambles cannot possibly be the result of the best efforts of a major Government Department in one of the world’s biggest economies.
As I have said before, my approach to this issue is based on reason and logic. Policy must be based on sound evidence. These pilot badger culls are as far from a sound evidence base as any policy that I have seen. There is no chance that the Somerset and Gloucestershire pilots will be abandoned. They will inevitably be seen through to the end (in time if not numbers of culled badgers). But I think that with the continued application of pressure and careful dissection of Defra’s fatuous arguments, there is a very good chance that they will not be repeated. So, to the ‘Digital Badger Protection Force’, the Injured Badger Patrols and everyone else dedicated to ending this nonsense, keep it up, the direction of travel on this is all one way. Momentum is firmly against the cull.
- See more at: http://mikerigby.org/2013/09/27/badger-cull-2-update/#comment-619