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A BADGER CULL beginning in England today will see 5,000 badgers shot in an attempt to curb the spread of tuberculosis to cattle.
The President of the UK’s National Farmers’ Union (NFU), Peter Kendall, wrote to NFU members today to tell them that the first pilot badger control operations have begun.
He described this as “an important step not just for cattle farmers but for the whole farming industry”.
He said that farmers “cannot go on culling tens of thousands of cattle every year because of TB while knowing the disease exists in wildlife uncontrolled”.
Kendall acknowledged that badger control “remains a controversial subject” and that “we understand that some people will never agree with controlling badgers in this way”. But he said he believes that more people than ever recognise the need to address the disease in badgers.
The cull will see up to 5,000 badgers killed in a bid to combat tuberculosis in cattle.
Animal welfare
Brian May joined protesters dressed as badgers as they marched through central London to call for an end to plans for a badger cull. Pic: Lewis Whyld/PA Wire
But animal welfare groups are against the cull. An initiative called Team Badger was set up calling on people to sign an e-petition asking for the cull to be stopped.
Team Badger is a coalition of the world’s largest animal and wildlife welfare groups, including the RSPCA, Care for the Wild, PETA, and Animal Aid. They want a “sustainable and realistic way to reduce the spread of bovine TB in cattle” and say that this cull” will contribute little or nothing to the long-term goal of eradicating TB nationally”.
The badgers will not be trapped, and instead the cull will take place as a ‘free-shoot’. Team Badger say:
The humaneness of using the free-shooting method is of grave concern to the group. If a cull is to be carried out, we believe it should be done in the most humane way possible.
Wales has introduced a vaccination programme for badgers instead of a cull.
Protests
Bovine TB spreads from badgers to cattle, and farmers are forced to slaughter thousands of infected animals every year.
Queen guitarist Brian May is one of the high-profile people who has spoken out against the cull. The longtime vegetarian said there was “not a shred of reason” for the culls in Gloucestershire and Somerset in southwest England.
He delivered a 235,000-signature petition against it to Prime Minister David Cameron’s office at Downing Street.
If the pilot schemes are successful, there are plans to roll out the cull in other rural areas hit badly by bovine TB.
The government argues that the cull is necessary to stop the spread of the disease, which forced English farmers to slaughter 28,000 cattle last year.
Public opinion is divided over the plan, with 29 percent supporting it and 34 percent opposing, according to a YouGov poll published in January.
Ireland
Ireland undertakes badger culling. The department of agriculture’s current wildlife policy on the eradication of bovine TB says that while it intends to replace culling with vaccination, “it will be some years before the benefits of a vaccine can be seen and therefore targeted badger removals will continue in the medium term.”
The department says the herd incidence of bovine TD has fallen from 7.5 per cent in 2000 to 4.1 per cent in 2012, which is the lowest recorded since the commencement of the eradication programme in the 1950s.
It said earlier this year:
While it is difficult to attribute trends to a single factor, we believe that most of the improvement in the TB situation, in recent years, is due the badger removal programme which was significantly enhanced in 2004 and, in particular, put on a more structured footing.
- Additional reporting AFP
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It’s a joke of an industry,
Many of the people I know who worked in it have left because creches want them to have degrees but they’ll pay them barely over min wage with next to no chance of any increases.
The money is made by the creche owners and certainly not the staff, the staff work crazy long hours with feck all pay.
The industry badly needs to be taken under the department of education
@Barry Somers: A lot of industries in Ireland operate that way. I know people working in manufacturing jobs taking home 329 euro for a 40 hour week. No pension, no benefits and no hope.
@Barry Somers: with it being 1800/1900 for two kids in Dublin then you know it’s not going to the workers
@David Corrigan: do they also have degrees to work in that industry though?
Even call centres pay more then child care and you don’t need a degree to get the call centre job.
@Barry Somers: No they would not have degrees to be honest with you Barry. 40 hour week working in an engineering environment.
Yet we are up there with the highest child care costs in Europe.
@Derek Durkin: on account of the insurance costs. The creches have to pay the ever increasing insurance premiums and then the government comes up with another new standard they have to adhere to which costs more again. While the fees are high, the creches aren’t exactly sitting on mounds of money.
@Derek Durkin: Yep, it’s only about 120 euro per child per month in Sweden. But we prefer to cut income taxes which makes services private at high cost to the individual, marvellous capitalism that destroys the family unit and only benefits the rich. https://sweden.se/society/10-things-that-make-sweden-family-friendly/
@Niall O’Neill: hey, the powers that be in this country have been trying to destroy the family unit for hundreds of years.
Remember our leader is of the opinion that you can get your rich parents to pay for it, or if you don’t have them you can leave.
Why does it come as a surprise to childcare workers that it is poorly paid? I have no kids and know nothing about kids, but I know it is and always has been a poorly paid job.
@John Horan: But it shouldn’t be so low that those working full time cannot make ends meet. If you work full time you should be able to afford to live, no matter what your job is.
@Chris Judge: I agree 100%.
@Chris Judge: Whether it should be or not isn’t really the issue. On a personal level why would you go into an industry knowing it is badly paid. As for no matter what job it should be a wage that you can live on is a new concept. Many jobs were only ever supplementary incomes worked part time. To change that whole nature will take a long time
@Craic_a_tower: Who cares what the reasons are – someone has to do it, so why question those who do?
It’s looking after kids, which is a very hard job and I respect them for it. They should be paid a decent salary.
I’d assume the main issue is the insurance costs for running a nursery/creche drive prices up, so very little of the money they make goes to the workers.
@Chris Judge: it seems fair to question people who complain about poor wages in a sector where everyone else knows it is poorly paid. There are people doing it on those wages.
Do you worry about landlords getting a decent return? Did you run to their defence when renting at a loss?
@Chris Judge: then don’t sign up for the job. The market will soon adjust when there is nobody willing to do the job
@Craic_a_tower: I assume people go into childcare because they see it as a rewarding job that they like and think they would be good at. Isn’t this what everyone should be doing? Pay is a seperate issue.
The answer is to go on strike and then see what happen they could bring the country to a standstill
Where is the money going? The creche fees in this country are outrageous.
A sure fire way of not retaining and attracting quality staff,
@David Walsh: and you have to jump through hoops to get the job to be paid peanuts..qualifications, Garda vetting, first aid training etc forget it, sure it not even a living wage and a lot of them end up going on the dole during summer if creches/montessoris and they become seasonally unemployed. It’s a mug’s game.
As a preschool teacher I can say how undervalued the industry is in this country which is why I’m currently emigrating to Australia where it is valued and recognised in wages! I do it for the love of the job but it’s getting ridiculous here. I’m at the top of the scale in this country (plus the pay cut we had to take in the recession due to cut in funding) and it’s a joke!
@Siobh: “I do it for the love of the job”
“So I’m going to Australia because they pay more”
Helicopter parents don’t help litigating when their kid falls over or bumps into something. Insurance companies will use that as justification to increase the premiums.
Childcare is a good career in the uk
Bring in a sectoral employment order
Time for the Department of Education to wake up !! This is Early Years Education…not a babysitting service. Some of my friends are teachers, I have more qualifications and training than they do. As pointed out above we also, cook, clean, advise etc…
It’s the same in a lot of jobs in Ireland, workers are struggling to make ends meet. I work in a multinational and several people in my area head to a second job after work. This is what FF/FG have done to our country. Cost of living WAY too high – people are no longer ‘living’, they’re merely existing.
have your say