Written by a fellow badgerist friend! Well done Ama, Steve and Jane I know we all have quite enough to do already, but I thought you should all know about a little spat I had yesterday with the Chief Executive of the Soil Association, Helen Browning. I was at the Seed Festival at Hawkwood College, Stroud on Saturday, exhibiting my sculptures of endangered British wildlife and also giving a third of my stand to the Totnes Badger Vaccination Action Campaign, and talking badgers, bovine TB and the badger cull to anyone who would stay still for long enough. Helen Browning gave a talk about how marvellous the Soil Association is, about trust and such like, and at the end there was a brief question and answer session. I explained that as a customer of organic produce I was among the 30% of organic customers who bought organic because I care about biodiversity, and that I felt the Soil Association had betrayed my trust by sitting on the fence over the badger cull, and showing no leadership at all. The response to this was truly shocking, and frankly worthy of Owen Patterson or Sarah Wollaston. She explained that organic farmers were well within their rights to control any wildlife, and that badger numbers were out of control. She went on to say badgers gave bovine TB to cattle and were responsible for the decline in hedgehog numbers. She was quite categorical about this. Myself, Steve Jones and his partner Jane attempted to counter these arguments and partially succeeded until Satish Kumar of Resurgence magazine pointed out that other people had questions they would like to put to Helen Browning, and could we move on. So, we waited a considerable time to speak to her at the end. The discussion was heated, and she admitted that she hadn’t been following this issue closely when I pointed out there has been only 1 scientific paper linking 40 cows to 4 badgers with the same strain of bovine TB, but that crucially, the direction of transmission could not be proven. I also pointed out that the British Hedgehog Preservation Society flatly refutes claims that badgers are responsible for the decline in hedgehog numbers. She was never the less adamant that badgers pass bovine TB to bovines, and that a cull would help the situation. She also said she was in favour of vaccination and they were looking into it. When I asked who they were working with on this she couldn’t name any one, or any organisation. As our own local organic farm, Riverford Organics, has pulled the same trick in the past of saying they were looking into vaccination, and, knowing that we are the biggest group of vaccinators near to Riverford, and also they haven’t even replied to any of our letters or emails, I knew this as a ploy to get us to shut up. I answered that we would be happy to vaccinate any badgers on organic farms in Devon and asked for her business card. I shall follow this up, but as we had tried to engage her about discussing soil health, and the ways that bovine TB can exist in the soil due to bad soil husbandry, (surely a subject that should be close to the heart of the Soil Association), she refused to accept that farmers management of land had any role to play and that any environmental factors were entirely the badgers, with other ‘vermin’ carrying the rest, rats, deer etc, and all should be culled. Rarely have I had the displeasure of trying to engage anyone so arrogant in intelligent debate. She spoke like one of the most privileged of politicians from the hunting fraternity, and claimed we were aggressive when we asked her questions she couldn’t answer. She was furious that I had taken notes during her speech and that I had the audacity to quote her own words back to her, and looked ready to walk out when I did so. Given she is aware of Owen Patterson’s stance on GM, which the Soil Association is passionately against, I was appalled to hear her spout the same drivel as OP does about badgers, with no reference to any science or research to prove her points. I shall follow up on badger vaccination, and I shall send her information about TBVAC, and what we will be able to offer as soon as we get the funding for some cage traps and other equipment. If anyone else has the ear of the Chief Executive of the Soil Association and fancy tackling her ignorance on badger ecology, please do let me know how you get on! soilassociation.org/
Posted on: Tue, 09 Jul 2013 15:23:04 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015