Secret filming reveals hidden cruelty of licensed badger culls
The brutal slaughter of tens of thousands of badgers, in the biggest destruction of a protected species in living memory is a national disgrace, said Dominic Dyer, CEO of the Badger Trust.
JAMIE DOWARD: ‘Trapped in a cage and shot at close range, the badger takes almost a minute to die. Covert footage published online by the Observer, the first to be shared publicly, shows the main method of dispatching Britain’s largest indigenous carnivore as part of a controversial cull now being expanded… “The brutal slaughter of tens of thousands of badgers, in the biggest destruction of a protected species in living memory, is a national disgrace,” said Dominic Dyer, CEO of the Badger Trust.
“This war on wildlife has been carried out in secrecy by poorly paid contractors with no independent monitoring or concern for animal welfare or public safety. The film footage that has emerged from Cumbria is the first time we have seen evidence of cull contractors at work. It clearly shows a badger taking over 50 seconds to die after being shot in a cage, and contractors removing it from the site without bagging and sealing the carcass in line with government TB biosecurity guidelines.”
The trust estimates that the government may have licensed the killing of more than 75,000 badgers by the end of the year, at a cost of tens of millions of pounds… It claims that once all the Whitehall administration, equipment, storage, training, monitoring, policing and legal costs are taken into account, the cost of cage trapping and shooting a badger is more than £1,000 per animal. In comparison, the cost of cage trapping, vaccinating and releasing a badger is less than £200 per animal. SOURCE…
RELATED VIDEO: