“Gas the badgers; they will just go to asleep”! The words of the “Princess Royal”! Apart from the obvious wrong of the badger cull, how would she know this “fact”? Has she tried it ? Hardly. I expect she thinks that all Hitler’s victims were just sent into a sweet little room to happily drift off to sleep; she needs a serious wake up call! Royal? A Royal halfwit, and rude to boot; she has persistently upset people down the years, but this is really “taking the mickey” When it comes to the potential abuse of animals, then it is time to draw the line on this ignorant, arrogant “Royal” who persistently abuses her privileged position in life.
When will she, along with numerous others, understand that if she had her cattle vaccinated they would not pass on TB through their faeces, for badgers and potentially other animals to contract and carry, due to foraging in the BOVINE droppings?! There is no scientific evidence that badgers carry TB to the cows. It is named BOVINE Tuberculosis for a reason, and is carried to the badgers and other animals through the BOVINES’ droppings. How much clearer can this be made, to those sadistic humans, who relish abusing, torturing and killing animals, and what is more, animals who are blameless of any “crime”
I QUOTE – Badger Trust chief executive Dominic Dyer warned that because gas did not spread through setts evenly “20 to 30% of the badgers will suffer prolonged painful deaths” if it was used in a cull.
More so than the cruel cull that caused numerous badgers to suffer and die in agony?!
I QUOTE – The RSPCA said it was “strongly opposed” to the use of gas to control the badger population.
Its head of public affairs David Bowles said: “Killing badgers will not solve the problem of bovine TB in cattle, whatever the method of culling.
I QUOTE – A leading badger expert dismissed Princess Anne’s suggestion as no better than the shooting cull. Dr Rosie Woodroffe, who conducted a 10-year trial of badger culls, said gassing badgers failed to control the spread of TB when it was tried in the 1970s.
She said: “Gassing badgers was government policy in the 70s and if you go back to reports of the time, there was frustration about how it just wasn’t very effective. Sets would be gassed and then opened up again by badgers again and again.”
Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, she said the practice of gassing badgers with cyanide proved to be so inhumane that it was banned in 1982. Woodroffe said: “The problem seemed to be that badger sets are built to hold warm air in and keep cold draft out, so it was very difficult to achieve a lethal concentration of gas. And sub-lethal concentrations of gas were inhumane – that’s why ministers banned gassing in 1982.”
She suggested the princess was being too simplistic. “It is tempting to think it would be easier to kill badgers when they are a sitting target underground, but it turns out from reports from the 70s that it is just not that straightforward,” Woodroffe said.
“There are rumours of farmers trying to use carbon monoxide on the quiet, using a tractor exhaust. That is something that is potentially not very effective and potentially inhumane.”
I QUOTE – Mark Jones, veterinarian and executive director of the animal protection campaign the Humane Society International UK, said: “It is extremely disappointing that a prominent member of the royal family should endorse the gassing of a supposedly protected indigenous wild mammal. Gassing experiments carried out at Porton Down in the early 1980s were abandoned because of the appalling levels of suffering to which the badgers were exposed.
“Any attempt to reintroduce gassing would doubtless result in a slow and painful death for many badgers, and potentially other non-target animals.”
He said the princess should be better informed before making public statements on such controversial and divisive issues.
Animal Logic 