It's about time the Government, NFU and farmers faced up to the truth badgers are not the cause of TB in cattle.

In July 2001, the Government's own Independent Scientific Group identified cattle-to-cattle infection as being a primary cause for concern.

Now we have outbreaks of TB in Cumbria and Scotland, areas previously unaffected by TB.

Badgers have certainly not migrated north, but farmers have moved huge numbers of cattle from the southwest to Cumbria and Scotland to restock after the foot and mouth outbreak.

Foot and mouth spread quickly due to cattle movements. Now TB is being spread the same way. Can the NFU and farmers not understand this simple logic?

Apparently not, because they continue to blame badgers and ask for their extermination.

Farmers must accept that buying cattle and importing breeding bulls can really mean they are purchasing TB.

Add to this, that due to inaccuracies, the Government's TB testing programme invariably misses infected cattle, then you have a recipe for disaster.

So what does the Government do? It starts slaughtering animals in the same way it did with foot and mouth. It is the only answer it knows.

The real answer is to stop spending millions on the slaughter of innocent badgers often leaving their cubs to die underground and start work towards a cattle vaccine.

May 1 will have seen the start of another badger cull somewhere in England. The Government will not say where, but as you read this, badgers who have spent many hours trapped in a small cage, are being shot by the Governments paid murderers.

Why? Simply as another experiment so that the Government can say to the farmers, 'We are doing something'.

Malcolm Clark

Southview

Horton

near Devizes