We welcome the decision of the court today that ruled against the NFU’s legal challenge of the UK Government over not allowing the badger cull to come to Derbyshire.
The NFU legal challenge over the decision by the government not to allow a badger cull in Derbyshire has reached its conclusion today and has ruled against the NFU.
Tim Birch of Derbyshire Wildlife Trust said: ‘We welcome the decision of the court today that ruled against the NFU’s legal challenge of the UK Government over not allowing the badger cull to come to Derbyshire. We hope that the government continues to support badger vaccination in Derbyshire and keep badgers free from culling.’.
Derbyshire Wildlife Trust continues to lead the largest badger vaccination programme in the country. The Trust will continue with their badger vaccination programme during 2020 working closely with the Government, landowners and farmers.
Tim Birch added ‘We urge the Government to widen its support for badger vaccination across the country and call for the badger cull to be stopped. Badger vaccination is the clear way forward. Bovine TB is primarily a cattle disease spread by cattle and this is where efforts to control the disease should be focused – not on badgers. Rather than wasting public money and time on court battles, the NFU should support badger vaccination and we repeat our call, for us to work together on rolling out a wider programme. Government policy has now changed to support vaccination and the NFU should be supporting badger vaccination not obstructing it.’.
In September 2019, Defra announced that culling licensee Natural England would not be extending the badger cull to Derbyshire.
The NFU submitted its application to the High Court for a judicial review of the Derbyshire badger cull refusal on 6 December and the hearing was held earlier last month via videolink.
Derbyshire Wildlife Trust recently released a report which also suggested evidence used in support of Derbyshire’s cull is flawed.
ENDS
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This is excellent news, Mark. The NFU’s judicial review was at once shameless and shameful. A ruling in their favour would have rubbished the efforts dozens of volunteers and, to be fair, some enlightened farmers who had agreed to allow vaccination on their land. I am not sure what this means for other areas but the NFU’s imperative to kill, kill, kill looks unlikely to prevail where it can be demonstrated that vaccination is well established as a means of infection control.
So well done to Derbyshire Wildlife Trust for leading the campaign to vaccinate badgers. Probably without this action by Derbyshire and other wildlife Trusts the Government would not have supported vaccination as an alternative to killing badgers and the NFU might have been successful. In its challenge.
What a woeful organisation the NFU is. It seems they oppose almost every conservation initiative in the countryside . Their record on this front is appalling.
As I understand it they mostly represent the big farming combines and have much less representation among smaller and individual farmers. As we said the other day it is another example of the rich and powerful large landowners trying to dictate policy contrary to the wishes of the majority.