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Louise Thomas
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Brian May has continued his impassioned campaign against badger culling as he branded the practice “morally indefensible” in a new documentary.
The Queen guitarist, who previously led a funeral parade through London in honour of the badgers killed, and butted heads with Jeremy Clarkson over his beliefs, compared the method which some farmers use to avoid bovine disease spreading, to a witch-hunt.
In the BBC’s Brian May: The Badgers, the Farmers and Me, May explores what he considers the wasteful slaughter of cows and badgers, and a government policy which he feels has failed farmers.
“How could we be so impertinent to assert that a whole bank of scientific study has been wrong?” he told Radio Times.
“In the 19th century, Queen Victoria’s physician single-handedly solved the problem of cholera in humans by overturning the universally held view among learned men that the disease was transmitted through the air.
“And a century before that, we were still burning witches at the stake in the firm belief that they were responsible for our problems.
“In pursuing the tragic badger cull, which has always been morally indefensible, we believe that science has made one of the biggest and most costly mistakes in history – hanging on to a policy that, in time, will be seen as no more effective than burning those unfortunate witches.”
Under UK law, it is illegal to kill or harm badgers, but a new government plan to wipe out all badgers in certain areas prompted a fresh row between officials and wildlife activists, earlier this year.
Under targeted culling – or “epidemiological culling” – badgers may be wiped out in areas, mostly southwest England, where bovine TB (bTB) is considered a particular threat.
Tom Langton, an ecologist who has challenged culling in the courts, said 100 per cent culling was tried in 2018 in Cumbria. “They shot 1,115 badgers - all of them - but could not then attribute change in TB rates to culling as seven farms were quite clearly reinfecting themselves because of the failed testing regime,” he said.
He cited a report that found no demonstrable benefit in lower TB rates in cattle.
However, Clarkson has said the threat to cattle from badgers was one of the most difficult topics to cover on screen during his filming for Prime series, Clarkson’s Farm.
“We thought, ‘What do we do?’ because if you want to make a popular show you have to say, ‘Oh, look at the little cuddly-wuddly badgers,’” Clarkson told The Daily Mail.
“But I thought: no, it’s a farming show, and you’d lose your core audience, the farmers, if you went around, saying, ‘Look at these sweet little animals.”
He continued: “So, I actually called them b*****ds and showed people what they actually do. It’s truthful.
“These are not nice animals. Do not be fooled by Brian May. This is what badgers do. This is how much heartache they’re causing to people who’ve worked for generations to build up a farm that’s been wiped out by badgers.”
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