With all the changes in Government over the last month, it can be hard to keep track of the legal cases that are developing or underway to end badger culling. Badger Crowd has been supporting a case against the public consultation on bovine TB control by the departed Tory Government that began in March of this year, prior to the Labour landslide victory at the polls at the start of July.
The Consultation was founded on its ludicrous and unscientific headline claim of a 56% benefit from badger culling and aimed at handing sweeping powers to the Chief Veterinary Officer. This would enable her to declare Badger Cull Areas of equal or greater size to those designated for culls to-date, and to allow the numbers of badgers shot to be without limits over an extended time period each year, and to 2038 or beyond. Effectively, this would be a free hand for badgers to be shot across farmland, and to be tempted with bait to leave protected areas to be killed much as since 2013. The aim would be, as in the failed Cumbia pilot Low Risk Area cull, to also shoot healthy animals moving into the culled areas once the shooting starts, with some token vaccination of a few badgers afterwards for a few years.
Badger Crowd has helped stand up against these wanton plans, now poorly labelled ‘Targeted Culling’ and has helped crowd-fund to enable legal work to challenge multiple aspects of the Consultation that look deceptive, poorly evidenced and unlawful. A case was lodged at the High Court and DEFRA were due to respond by 29th July.
However, last week Badger Crowd learns that The Government Legal Department representing the new Secretary of State, Steve Reed, indicated that DEFRA would like a four-week extension of the deadline for filing, should it wish to, of what is called an Acknowledgement of Service, where the defendant makes their case clear. This would push their response towards the end of August. It was said that the new Labour Government may intend to take a different approach to that pursued by the previous Government and that there was need for more time to make proper decisions. Going ahead with a case now without clarity on the new government’s position on the Consultation might be contrary to all parties’ interests and the overriding objective of tackling the disease.
This seems sensible, to avoid significant waste of costs and of court time and resources, albeit that a clear mandate to end badger culling was set out in the Labour manifesto. Agreement to this request was made, in the hope of good decision making.
Equally we hope that ‘supplementary’ and ‘intensive’ culling is brought to an immediate end. With a new self-proclaimed anti-cull government in place, there are 48 cull areas remaining this year, 25 of which ending this year, with 23 ending next year. The contracts should have been ended by now. There is no real argument not to.
However, bringing an end to the tragic cycle of misinformation, financial waste, nature side effect impacts uncertainty and animal welfare issues of so-called Targeted Culling, is the basis of this current legal case. There will be a further news updates at the end of this month or before if things move faster. Its time now to listen to the science and stop the badger culls.
