Class divisions exacerbated by the Enclosure Movement continue to boil just beneath the skin in Britain, fueling such diverse activities as pedigree dog shows and the RSPCA.
If one is looking for evidence of the pentimento of the Enclosure Movement, however, one could hardly do better than study the current platforms of the Labour and Conservative parties where, perversely, fox-hunting is a front-and-center debate.
As The Farmers Guardian notes:
A CONSERVATIVE Government would introduce a comprehensive package of measures to tackle TB in cattle and badgers and give MPs a free vote to repeal the fox hunting ban, it has been confirmed.
The Tory election manifesto, launched by David Cameron this morning (Tuesday, April 13), said bovine TB had led to the slaughter of over 250,000 cattle since 1997.
In what is seen as a key point of difference with the Labour Party it pledged to tackle the disease which it described as ‘the most pressing animal health problem in the UK’ through ‘a carefully-managed and science-led policy of badger control’.
“While vaccination is an important part of the long-term solution we cannot afford to wait until 2014 when this may be available.
“A carefully managed and science-led policy of badger control in areas of high and persistent levels of TB in cattle is necessary to eradicate this disease,” Jim Paice, Shadow Farm Minister told Farmers Guardian.
In another controversial move, the Conservative manifesto also promised to give Parliament the opportunity to repeal the Hunting Act on a free vote.
“The Hunting Act has proved unworkable,” it says.
The Conservative’s overall manifesto message to farmers and voters was to promote ‘a sustainable and productive’ agriculture.
Right.
Here is a perfect case of both sides starting with their conclusions and carefully crafting their rationales around them.
One side acts as if the badger is an endangered animal rather than a creature more common than the fox in the British countryside.
The other side acts as if badgers are a major threat to farm economies, and never mind if they have been present in the U.K. longer than either man or cow!
But set aside badgers . . . What about fox hunting?
The one uncontested truth here is that "the Ban" on fox hunting is universally seen as having been a complete and total flop.
Not only did it NOT slow down the mounted hunts in the slightest (they are more popular than ever), but it did not save a single fox life, as vehicle impact, snares, disease, and guns have served as alternative methods off trimming off Mother Nature's excess.
What the Ban did do, however, was undermine the rule of law.
Not only was the Ban widely flouted, but the police could not be bothered to enforce it, as the law was so poorly crafted that getting a conviction was nearly impossible, and even when achieved, was never popular.
The good news for common sense and the rule of law is that the Ban on fox hunting with dogs may not survive the Spring. As The Independent notes:
The Conservative lead over Labour widened yet further in the week that the date of the general election was finally announced. As a result, the party now appears tantalisingly close to an overall majority, but is still somewhat short of what it needs to be confident of outright victory on 6 May.
Our latest poll of polls, based on no less than 13 national polls conducted during the course of last week, now puts the Conservatives on 39 per cent, up one point on the previous week. That means David Cameron's party is now nine points ahead of Labour, whose average vote, at 30 percent, is unchanged.
Of course even a Conservative win will not end the debate, if for no other reason than the debate about fox hunting has never been about fox!
The issues here are deeper than that.
These are ancient land and class grievances passed down from one generation to another, for 200 years. Only the naive would imagine they will not be fanned, fed and nurtured into the future.
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7 comments:
Sir, You are missing the point on badgers. They aren't a pest species, but they are an extremely efficient reservoir host for the zoonotic disease Bovine Tuberculosis (bTB). bTB can infect a variety of different animals; it is especially damaging to humans, cattle, camelids and most common pets like dogs and cats.
Up to the late 1990s, bTB was rare. Gassing badgers in bTB hotspot areas and rigorous testing of cattle herds (followed by elimination of the badger reservoir hosts if cows tested as infected) had reduced the incidence of the disease to a very low level; had this system carried on, bTB incidence would have remained extremely low. However, it did not.
In the lead-up to his hugely successful electroal campaign, Tony Blair took campaign donations from pretty much anybody, and notably took donations from several animal rights groups on the understanding that badger culling was to stop. Tony was true to his word on this one; the man was and is a very honest politician in that once bought, he stays bought. In 1997 badger culling pretty much ceased, badger numbers slowly increased and incidence of bTB in these reservoir hosts increased in a near-exponential fashion.
As bTB incidence increased, so did transmission of bTB to cattle herds. Under the Ministry of Agriculture rules, infected herds were culled and farmers compensated for the loss. Since 1997 this compensation has gone from a minor cost in the hundreds of thousands per annum to the high millions per annum, and the disease is still spreading.
It is this willful failure to face facts and act in a rational manner which so incenses a lot of people in Britain today; allowing a minor endemic disease to explode into an epidemic is unpardonable.
I do understand the situation Dan.
What I do not understand (outside of the general class-warfare framework set in motion by the Enclosure Movement) is why the Government is in the business of gassing badgers at all, when dog men have done the job since the beginning, and regulation of a cull through hunting and trapping is NOT a new or novel idea in the rest of the world.
As I have said in the past:
"In the U.K. they have banned all trapping, and instead of collecting taxes from trappers, they pay their government to go out and pump poison gas down tens of thousands of badger settes in order to control Bovine Tuberculosis.
"Here in the U.S., we regulate and license hunting and trapping with real seasons, bag limits, and a solid tradition of habitat protection. In fact, most states that have legal trapping actually produce manuals on how to trap."
Where you in the U.K. have turned wildlife control into a cash loss for taxpayers, we have turned it into a cash cow (pardon the pun) to help support wildlife conservation where needed.
Of course, a small problem with bTB is that it is NOT just badgers that serve as a vector -- deer can carry it too, as well as red fox and even farm cats. So the vectors are all over, and it's not just badger (though they seem to get all the attention and are more suceptible than some other species, a fact that may counter-balanced somewhat by the total populations of other species that can carry the infection).
The fact that more than one animal vector is at work with bTB is no reason not to control things in cattle country, of course. In fact, it simply underscores why a well-managed and well-regulated wildlife management plan based on licensed sport-hunting built around seasons and bag limits is the ONLY way to go. Do it any other way, and the country will go broke!
P.
Have you not seen the nature documentary where the people feed urban badgers?
It's even more extreme than the one where they feed the foxes.
There was one family who bought the most expensive desserts they could find for their "pets."
Eurasian badgers are social animals.
If Coppinger is correct, then why hasn't anyone domesticated them?
I don't know if you've read the James Herriot books, but one of the vets who is mentioned in them (based on a real life person) actually had some pet badgers. He carried one on his shoulder all the time!
Badgers make poor pets for two reasons:
1) Like most mustelids, they have a foul odor. This might be fixable with surgery (as with skunks and ferrets), but without it they stink.
2) They have an unstoppable need to dig and burrow underground, and will rip up floors and rugs trying to get to ground. Ferrets have the same desired, but the size differntials here are enormous.
Sure you can raise one outside in a concrete run, but that's just horribly cruel. Badgers need to be badgers and fully actualized like everything else. Not everything is meant to be a pet; most wild animals are not.
P.
The other reason for the draconian legislation regarding badgers was to try to stamp out the vile "sport" of badger baiting. A Eurasian badger is not really a match for a terrier, or even an animal the size of a pit-bull; in a one-on-one fight the dog loses, always (in a one-on-one argument between a car and a badger, the badger often survives the encounter; badgers are extremely resilient animals).
So, badger baiters often crippled badgers before pitting several dogs onto them; this sport was little more than torture of badgers and dogs. The legislation surrounding badgers was enacted to try to put a stop to this cruelty, but as so often happens with British legislation, the legislators went entirely too far and effectively made the badger almost untouchable, to the extent that even if the pesky little things are undermining a major road or a building, you cannot legally touch them.
So, badgers got an official mark of untouchability, and the Government got lumped with the task of culling them, which was carried out in the usual regulation-bound and grossly inefficient manner; it is a measure of the ease by which culling removes TB that this rather inefficient method achieved the results that it did.
As of now, badger baiters still exist albeit only as a remnant, but animal lovers all over the country would seemingly rather the Government paid out millions in compensation to farmers rather than eradicate TB from badgers by the most efficient process possible. A recently mooted proposal is to use the BCG vaccine on badgers to curb the TB epizootic; for many reasons this is almost the most idiotic plan imaginable.
Some time after the upcoming General Election and necessary spending cuts the Government will be forced to act rationally, and will likely develop a means of gassing badgers with carbon monoxide; if deployed quickly, quietly and on a widespread basis this ought to get the incidence of TB back to the former low level inside of a few years.
To be clear, badger "baiting" is quite different from badger hunting. Badgers are hunted all over the world with dogs (and YES, even in the U.K. to this day) and though the dogs may take some stick, most learn their job and come to know the difference between butt and breath.
For a post on the difference between badger baiting and badger hunting (the difference between lightning and the lightning bug), see "Badger Baiting Is Not Badger Hunting" at >> http://terriermandotcom.blogspot.com/2009/07/badger-baiting-is-not-badger-hunting.html
P.
To be clear, badger "baiting" is quite different from badger hunting. Badgers are hunted all over the world with dogs (and YES, even in the U.K. to this day) and though the dogs may take some stick, most learn their job and come to know the difference between butt and breath.
For a post on the difference between badger baiting and badger hunting (the difference between lightning and the lightning bug), see "Badger Baiting Is Not Badger Hunting" at >> http://terriermandotcom.blogspot.com/2009/07/badger-baiting-is-not-badger-hunting.html
P.
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