ePetition details

Stop Lancashire's Badgers from being culled, vaccinate instead.

We, the undersigned, petition the county council to to prohibit the culling of badgers on council-owned land and invest in vaccination programmes locally. We ask this because we believe culling to be inhumane, inefficient and unscientific.

This is a national issue which will be of direct concern to the people of Lancashire when DEFRA "rolls out" its culling policy in 2014. The object of the petition is to ensure that Lancashire's badger population is as safe as possible from slaughter and that the already available injectable badger vaccine against bTB is used in as many cases as possible. We ask this because we believe the culling policy is inhumane (DEFRA's measurement of "humaneness" is to time the screams of wounded badgers), inefficient (previous culls showed an increase in bTB because of badger movement) and unscientific (the majority of scientific opinion hold that a cull will have "no meaningful result").

This ePetition ran from 18/11/2013 to 23/05/2014 and has now finished.

442 people signed this ePetition.

Council response

Thank you for submitting the e-petition to Lancashire County Council relating to support of vaccination rather than badger culling in Lancashire, following the recent pilot badger culling scheme in Somerset and Gloucestershire.

You may already be aware that England is split into three areas for the purposes of TB control:

• High risk – South West and Wales
• Edge Area – Areas which border the High risk area
• Low Risk Area – Includes Lancashire.

Controls are concentrated in the High and Edge areas these include annual testing, pre movement testing of animals and the pilot culls and vaccination trials on badgers. The controls in the low risk areas are concentrated on affected herds and those premises close to affected premises. There is no indication from DEFRA that badger culling or other enhanced controls such as vaccination are proposed in low risk areas.

On 3 April 2014 an independent report by an expert panel was published in relation to the pilot badger culls in Somerset and Gloucestershire. The pilot cull is restricted to the two areas and there are no plans to extend them at the moment, neither is it certain that the activity will continue in those areas. Some of the concerns raised by the independent expert panel were:

• the effectiveness of the cull in reducing badger population which was less than 50% (expected 70%)
• patchy coverage of the area of the pilot
• possible concerns in relation to the suffering caused to some badgers if not dispatched effectively

The DEFRA response to the Expert Panel Report findings indicates that the pilot cull in Gloucestershire and Somerset may continue if the concerns of the panel are addressed. However, as Lancashire is a low risk area, there are no current plans for a cull or for vaccination trials.

Should this situation change, and further measures be proposed for Lancashire, then the county council will be able to make representations to DEFRA in relation to culling, and as things stand will be able to refuse permission for a cull on county council owned land. Any decision will be made based on all the evidence available at the time, and taking into account the views of Lancashire residents and stakeholders.

DEFRAs control strategy can be found at:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/a-strategy-for-achieving-officially-bovine-tuberculosis-free-status-for-england

The independent panel report can be found at:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/pilot-badger-culls-in-somerset-and-gloucestershire-report-by-the-independent-expert-panel