THE whole future of the UK cattle industry is under threat if bovine TB is not brought under control, Environment Minister Owen Paterson said at the
Royal Three Counties Show.
He was speaking as the first of two pilot schemes to shoot badgers, which are said to pass on the disease to cattle, was starting only a dozen miles south of the event’s showground at Malvern.
Mr Paterson, who is from a Shropshire farming family and was educated at Abberley Hall school, near Tenbury, said he kept two pet badgers as a child.
“My aim is to have a healthy badger population and a healthy cattle population,” he said.
“There is nothing kind about letting badgers suffer with this terrible disease and my target, although I admit it is ambitious, is to have the UK TB free in 25 years.
“We had the disease down to 0.01 per cent in 1972 and we have let things slip badly since then.”
Mr Paterson said that if the two trials – one on the Worcestershire-Gloucestershire border, where it is proposed to cull nearly 3,000 badgers in six weeks, and the other in West Somerset – proved successful, he “looked forward” to rolling out the scheme to 10 more areas next year.