County council expresses concerns about badger cull

Warwickshire County Council has expressed concerns about the culling of badgers on land it owns and urged DEFRA to explore alternatives to control tuberculosis in cattle.

The issue of badger culling was raised in a motion submitted by the Green Group and follows the recent announcement that the cull will be extended to Warwickshire, a move that will see up to 2223 killed in its first year.

Introducing the motion, Keith Kondakor, said: “The cull itself has clearly been a failure the government indicated in March that culling would be phased out after the review by Professor Charles Godfrey. The public is strongly against the badger cull as well, more than 100,000 badgers have been killed under license since 2013 in the name of preventing bovine TB in cattle, yet there’s no credible evidence to suggest the policy is working.

“Meanwhile bovine TB continues to spread amongst cattle herds through lax trading practices, poor biosecurity and inadequate testing regimes.”

The motion, which expressed concern about badger culling on council land and called for alternatives to be explored, was passed by members.

In its original motion the Green Group had called on the council to actively promote better biosecurity and including the vaccination of badgers, with tenants of its smallholdings.

However this we dropped following an amendment from Conservative member Cllr Peter Butlin, who argued that biosecurity is already taken very seriously by farmers.