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