6 November 2007 - Farmers’ proposals to cull badgers in East Sussex to prevent the spread of TB in cattle is cruel and could be counter-productive, Green Party Euro-MP Caroline Lucas has warned.

Dr Lucas, a former vice-president of the EU’s committee of inquiry into the UK’s foot and mouth disease outbreak in 2001, said: "Culling badgers to control the spread of TB in cattle appears to be completely counter-productive.

"A culling-based TB strategy in South-West England has led to an increase in cases amongst cattle, and to cases developing in areas that had previously been free of the disease.

"We need a rational, evidence-based policy for halting the spread of bovine TB, 80 per cent of which is caused by cattle-to-cattle infection and has nothing whatsoever to do with badgers. In the remaining cases, culling badgers could be increasing the range of neighbouring populations, causing the disease to spread more widely.”

Dr Lucas, a vice-president of both the RSPCA and the European Parliament’s cross-party group on Animal Welfare, and the Green Party’s prospective parliamentary candidate for Brighton Pavilion, added: "Badger culling is a distraction - and the uncomfortable truth for the Government is that bovine TB is more likely to be spread between cattle kept in crowded quarters, and the answer is more likely to lie in improving animal welfare standards."

“Methods commonly used to cull badgers - shooting, gassing and snaring - are cruel and could contravene the 1992 Badger Act designed to protect badgers from acts of cruelty, and the Bern Convention, which commits the UK to conserving wild flora, fauna and their native habitats’, said Dr Lucas.

ENDS