#stopthecull Domimic Dyer reminded us the late Edward Kennedy said "Integrity is the lifeblood of democracy and deceit is poison in its veins." The badger cull policy was never about effective disease control or science, it was based on a web of deceit that was spun by David Cameron with the help of Owen Paterson and now the unknowledgeable Liz Truss, who reads Paterson's scripts almost word for word.  The badger cull policy could only be delivered by politicians closely aligned with the National Farmers Union and Countryside Alliance and comfortable to spin a web of deceit and misinformation to MPs, the media and the wider public.

Cameron put his civil servants to work developing a pro cull propaganda machine to paint a highly inaccurate picture of the scale and cost of the bovine TB crisis and the need to eradicate badgers to control it.

DEFRA did all it could to blame badgers as the prime cause of TB in cattle, but in actual FACT 95% of the infection is between the cattle, which are often housed in large numbers in sheds and transportation where cattle are crowded together. TB is passed on by breath, as it is in humans.

 Over 13 million cattle are moved around the UK each year.  Highest number in all Europe. The European Commission inspection in the UK showed up poor cattle controls and poor TB testing regimes, and gave the UK Government millions of pounds for improvement.  Little did they think it would be wasted on badger culls.  It is the cattle which suffer most from TB, hence its name implies bovine TB.  It infects other animals also, including badgers, but in actual fact TB has very little impact on the health of badgers in their short lifetime, as little as 1% to 5% only could ever pass it on.

We were told by DEFRA that bovine TB is the biggest crisis facing UK farming industry, whereas from the figures for cattle prematurely slaughtered, bTB is among the lowest.
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In Wales where thousands of badgers have been tested prior to vaccination, not a single badger was sick or had bTB despite being in a TB hot-spot area.