Life as a farmer in the West Country has been a back-breaking struggle over the past few years.
It’s hard enough for cattle and dairy farmers dealing with falling incomes, before you face the catastrophe of badgers infecting your cattle with bovine TB — which has struck my herd twice in five years.
Farming is my way of life. I love my cows, and there’s nothing I wouldn’t do to protect their welfare. When you’re breeding cattle, you know their family line going way back. When you have to destroy an infected cow — as I’ve had to do repeatedly — it’s soul-destroying, and all that hard work is gone.
Shame: How sad it is that the management of Caffe Nero (file photo) has bowed under pressure from a tiny group of these activists. The High Street chain has decided not to use milk from farms in badger cull zones
Since 2008, more than 255,000 TB-infected cattle have been culled in Britain. Meanwhile, the badger population has soared over the years: it grew by 60 per cent between the mid-Eighties and the mid-Nineties, from 250,000 to 400,000. There’s no doubt that there’s a correlation.
And now — just when a badger cull was showing signs of success in my part of the world — the animal rights activists are back, trying to stop us making a living.
Threats
How sad it is that the management of Caffe Nero has bowed under pressure from a tiny group of these activists. The High Street coffee chain has decided not to use milk from farms in those cull zones in Somerset and Gloucestershire, after threats to target their premises during ‘anti-austerity’ demonstrations.
These activists are just a tiny minority of heavies, using bully-boy tactics. But despite there being so few of them — just 200 threatening Caffe Nero on the internet — they have succeeded in stopping valuable milk contracts for dairy farmers, who’ve been very close to going under in recent years.
The activists are said to be taking on Sainsbury’s next, demanding they stop using milk from the area used for the culls. I do hope Sainsbury’s stands up to such terrible, abusive behaviour.
These activists are just a tiny minority of heavies, using bully-boy tactics
If the management of Caffe Nero really care so much about badgers, why didn’t they stop taking milk from the affected areas when culling began two years ago? Perhaps there’s been a change of management since —but otherwise I can only think the managers have buckled in the face of heavy-handed threats.
If you or I had a problem with this kind of bullying, we’d call the police to sort it out. We wouldn’t suddenly change our business practices. Why should Caffe Nero behave differently?
But that’s the problem with activists: they’re fanatics. They can target anyone. You can’t reason with them.
They know nothing about the real TB situation on the ground. The protesters are full of hate against farmers — and really want everyone to go vegan.
The activists who came down to the West Country during the cull were the same ones who were anti-fracking. They’re just anti-everything, without understanding anything.
Growing: Since 2008, more than 255,000 TB-infected cattle have been culled in Britain. Meanwhile, the badger population has soared over the years: it grew by 60 per cent between the mid-Eighties and the mid-Nineties
It’s such a shame that these activists haven’t read about the problem we’ve got. If they were aware of the whole picture of TB in the countryside, they’d appreciate what we farmers are trying to do — to save not just cattle, but wildlife, too.
The fact is that the only way to eradicate TB — in cattle and badgers — is to have a cull: vaccinations are an expensive and ineffective option unless accompanied by culling, not least because you can’t vaccinate badgers which have already got the disease and are infecting other healthy animals.
A cull in the hotspot areas with heavy TB infections is vital to control the spread of the disease. You then vaccinate badgers in a ‘buffer zone’ that separates these heavily infected areas from infection-free areas. It this approach were implemented, the problem would be taken care of, and you would get healthier badgers and TB-free cows.
We farmers don’t like to see badgers suffering any more than the next person; but what the anti-cull activists will not tell you is that badgers really do suffer with TB. They’re pushed out from the sett, and die a slow, nasty death.
None of us wants to see badgers wiped out — it’s just that you have to cut the soaring badger population to a manageable level. For a vibrant countryside, you need to have a happy equilibrium between wildlife and farming.
Farming is my way of life. I love my cows (not pictured, file photo), and there’s nothing I wouldn’t do to protect their welfare. When you have to destroy an infected cow – as I’ve had to do repeatedly – it’s soul-destroying
Culls have worked in other countries — in Ireland, for example, and New Zealand, where they cull TB-infected possums. But the badger activists don’t care about evidence — they just rely on whipping up emotion.
The real question is: do they want a countryside that works; that’s in balance? Something to be proud of? Something for their children and their children’s children to enjoy?
I do — and so do 99 per cent of farmers. We look at the big picture. We don’t look at tomorrow, but next year, ten years’ time or even longer. It’s crucial for the sake of rural Britain to take this long-term view.
The real question is: do they want a countryside that works; that’s in balance?
Just as culls in other countries have been successful, I believe the culls in Gloucestershire and Somerset will prove successful, too. We’ll know the complete results in two years’ time — it’s not going to be a quick fix, but it appears to be working.
That is why the Conservative government has pledged to continue it. And why it is essential that commercial organisations such as Caffe Nero do not give in to bullies and fanatics.
It is no exaggeration to say that, if these protesters have their way, the countryside will be in peril.
Precarious
The economic situation is already precarious, both for cattle farmers such as me and for dairy farmers. The price for milk — and for beef and lamb — is very low and is being driven down by supermarkets.
Those poor dairy farmers who lose their contracts with Caffe Nero — or Sainsbury’s if they succumb to protester bullying — will be right up against it. Many could go out of business.
Time to stand up: The activists are said to be taking on Sainsbury’s next, demanding they stop using milk from the area used for the culls. I do hope Sainsbury’s (file photo) stands up to such terrible, abusive behaviour
In addition, there is the cost of dealing with TB. Five years ago, my animals were forcibly confined to my 500-acre farm after several of them tested positive for bovine TB — you only need a single infected cow for the whole herd to be quarantined.
If you pass the TB test, it’s utter relief — like you’ve won the lottery. But if a single animal fails, that’s it.
Eighteen of my cattle were destroyed because of the disease. Yes, I do get compensated — but at a vast discount.
For cows that would sell for £1,200, I got £800 in official compensation; for a slaughtered £5,000 bull I received only £3,000 compensation.
I spent two winters sheltering and feeding animals which could not be sold because they had to be kept on the farm — paying for them out of my dwindling resources. Some farmers in the West Country have had their herds confined to their farms for a decade.
Hard
My herd was declared disease-free in 2012. But, then, this April my herd was hit once again by TB, when one animal tested positive.
When that happens, you can’t trade for four months — you’ve got to have two sets of clean TB tests, each of them 60 days apart. Imagine if that happened in any other business — four months when you’re not allowed to do any business.
If you pass the TB test, it’s utter relief — like you’ve won the lottery. But if a single animal fails, that’s it
I’ve got £45,000-worth of stock that I can’t sell until the end of September. Normally, I sell £8,000-worth of breeding bulls to dairy farmers at this time of year — bulls they won’t want in September, because it’s not the breeding season.
But I’ve still got to pay for feed, rent, diesel, wages, for the mortgage and for bank charges. I’m nearly up to my overdraft limit.
It was extremely hard being under restriction before, and it’s extremely hard now.
And the reason for this infection is obvious. Badgers — which spread the disease across the fields in their urine. Cows then eat the infected grass and contract TB.
Thanks to bovine TB, plenty of farmers have given up their farms for good. Over the past 20 years, the number of cows in Britain has dropped by around a quarter.
I was born and bred on my farm, and I’m clinging on. But who knows for how much longer any of us will continue, if these bully-boy protesters have their way?
Source: Daily Mail UK
