Shrewsbury farmer hoping for badger cull success

A farmer has welcomed Government approval of a cull on badgers – after losing 80 cattle in four years to bovine TB on his Shropshire farm.

Jonathan Lovegrove-Fielden, 62, who owns Oaks Hall Farm, in Longden, near Shrewsbury, said a neighbouring farmer had lost 200 cattle – including young calves – in the last three months due to positive bovine TB testing.

Environment secretary Caroline Spelman has given the go-ahead for controlled culling in two pilot areas in early 2012.

More than 25,000 cattle had to be slaughtered in 2010, with badgers largely blamed for carrying the disease and passing it on.

Mr Lovegrove-Fielden said: "I could be considered one of the luckier ones.

"In the last three months my neighbour has lost 200 cattle, including young calves – due to positive TB testing.

"I welcome Environment Secretary, Caroline Spelman, and her approval of the badger cull.

"This is a dreadful disease, the losses of cattle are only half the story.

"The disease has had a stranglehold on livestock farmers across the UK with livelihoods and cash-flows frozen for months and months, the moment a beast which reacts to the test is found."

Mr Lovegrove-Fielden said the disease needed 'tackling and quickly' and added the longer it went on, the more it would spread, and more badgers and cattle would suffer.

He said: "I have no problem with badgers – indeed the reason we have them at home is because we protected them long before the law did.

"However, now many of them are cruelly suffering from TB. It is surely time we worked towards creating a healthy environment, and welcome a renaissance of healthy badgers."

Ministers say the cull will be carried out in a 'highly controlled' manner with 40 areas in England required to submit a bid in competition with each other to be part of the pilot.

"To pit areas against one another is a typical bureaucratic nonsense which only a desk bound civil servant would dream up," Mr Lovegrove-Fielden said.

"Hopefully Shropshire will be successful, but the earliest a cull could take place would be 2014."

See also:

• Badger cull given the go ahead in two areas of England

• Letter: Don’t cull our badgers