Keith Taylor MEP: 'Badger cull is a spectacularly expensive, ineffective and inhumane policy justified by a poor understanding of the science'
Keith Taylor, Animals spokesperson for the Green Party, is calling on the Government to end the ineffective, expensive and inhumane badger cull ahead of a debate on the divisive programme in the House of Commons.
More than 100,000 people signed a petition calling for an end to the badger cull and cancellation of plans to expand the slaughter to new areas. Since 2013, thousands of badgers have been killed in a Government cull aimed at controlling bovine tuberculosis.
Keith Taylor, Green MEP for the South East and Vice-Chair of the European Parliament's Animal Welfare Intergroup, said:
"The badger cull is a spectacularly expensive, ineffective and inhumane policy justified with a poor understanding of science. Over the past four years, the Government has spent £40 million of taxpayers' money killing 15,000 badgers in England. The so-called 'free shooting' method employed sees badgers subjected to slow and excruciating deaths. The practice is considered cruel and ineffective by the Government's own experts and the British Veterinary Association."
"Despite the expense and extensive cruelty, not to mention the systematic destruction of a protected species, the Government has provided no evidence to prove that killing badgers is having any impact on lowering bovine TB around badger cull zones. Ministers also refuse to accept a growing mountain of scientific research, which indicates that badgers largely avoid interaction with cattle and reveals just how difficult it is for badgers to transmit bovine TB to a cow."
“The scientific evidence and economic analysis tell us that the cull is an irrational and failed project. In fact, the latest government-funded report concluded that the UK’s bovine TB ‘control’ programme is nothing more than mass cruelty supported by a bad reading of the science."
"Rather than condemning thousands more badgers to long, painful and unnecessary deaths, the government needs to re-focus its efforts on humane and evidence-based controls."
"I’m calling on MPs and the Government to make the compassionate, scientifically sound and economically literate choice and put an end to the cull once and for all.”