Badger cull costs claims criticised
The NFU and the government have hit back at claims by an animal welfare charity that the pilot badger culls have been “disastrous and expensive”.
The charity Care for the Wild has said the badger cull pilots in Somerset and Gloucestershire cost £4,100 for each badger shot.
NFU director general Andy Robertson said: “The cost of the badger culls should not be confused with the costs of policing protestors. The culls were paid for by farmers and landowners and carried out by independent companies in areas where TB is rife and is having a devastating impact on farming families and their businesses.
“The work carried out by the cull companies was legal and licensed and was carried out safely and humanely. Policing costs are a matter for government but any costs would be a reflection of the threats of illegal action, trespass and intimidation by anti-cull protestors.”
Care for the Wild said the cost of the trials, which began last summer, had risen to £7.3m, according to answers to parliamentary questions, statistics from DEFRA and Freedom of Information (FOI) requests.
Taxpayers will foot £5.8m of the bill with the remainder being funded by farmers, who paid for trained marksmen to carry out the shootings.
Care for the Wild estimated the policing bill at £2.66m and DEFRA costs at £3.17m for year one of the four-year trials, which saw 1,771 badgers removed. The cost to farmers was put at £1.49m.
“The cost of the badger culls should not be confused with the costs of policing protestors. The culls were paid for by farmers and landowners and carried out by independent companies in areas where TB is rife and is having a devastating impact on farming families and their businesses.”
Andy Robertson, NFU director general
The charity has also estimated that if the pilots run for four years, as planned by the government, the total cost could run to £19m.
Dominic Dyer, Care for the Wild’s policy advisor, claimed the government had delivered “one of the most disastrous and expensive wildlife culls in history”.
He added: “The way to solve the problem of bovine TB is by radically improving farming practices, ensuring that TB testing actually works, and ensuring that infected cattle aren’t moved from farm to farm.
“The focus on wildlife is a distraction – the farmers need to sort out the plank in their own eye before trying to deal with the speck of badgers.”
However, the NFU and DEFRA said the cost of the pilots are much lower than the potential long-term costs to the industry if the disease is left to run rampant across our countryside.
A DEFRA spokesman said: “The costs of the badger cull pilots are vastly outweighed by the impact that bovine TB is having on our farming industry and taxpayers.
“Each bovine TB cattle outbreak costs an average £34,000, and if left unchecked this disease will cost the taxpayer £1bn over the next 10 years.”
An independent panel of wildlife experts is set to publish a report into on the pilots before the end of February. The findings will inform the government’s plans to roll out the culls in up to 10 new areas this year.