Brian May criticises badger cull as 'morally indefensible'

Brian May has continued his passionate campaign against badger culling, branding the practice “morally indefensible” in a new documentary.

The Queen guitarist, who previously led a funeral procession through London in honour of murdered badgers and clashed with Jeremy Clarkson over his beliefs, compared the method some farmers use to prevent the spread of bovine diseases to a witch hunt.

On the BBC Brian May: Badgers, Farmers and MeMay explores what he sees as the wasteful culling of cows and badgers, and a government policy that he believes has failed farmers.

“How could we be so impertinent as to claim that an entire bank of scientific studies was wrong?” he said. Radio Times.

“In the 19th century, Queen Victoria’s physician single-handedly solved the problem of cholera in humans, reversing the universally accepted view among learned men that the disease was transmitted through the air.

“And a century earlier, we were still burning witches at the stake in the firm belief that they were responsible for our problems.

“In pursuing the tragic badger cull, which has always been morally indefensible, we believe that science has made one of the biggest and most costly mistakes in history: clinging to a policy that will, in time, be seen as no more effective than burning these unfortunate witches.”

Under UK law, it is illegal to kill or harm badgers, but a new government plan to cull all badgers in certain areas sparked a fresh row between officials and wildlife activists earlier this year.

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Through targeted culling – or “epidemiological culling” – badgers could be wiped out in areas, mainly in south-west England, where bovine tuberculosis (TB) is considered a particular threat.

Tom Langton, an environmentalist who has challenged the cull in court, said that 100 per cent culling was attempted in Cumbria in 2018. “They killed 1,115 badgers, all of them, but they couldn’t attribute the change in TB rates to the cull as seven farms were clearly reinfecting themselves because of the failed testing regime,” he said.

He cited a report that found no demonstrable benefit in lower rates of tuberculosis in cattle.

Clarkson has said the threat badgers pose to livestock was one of the most difficult topics to cover on screen during filming of her Prime series, Clarkson's Farm.

“We thought, ‘What do we do?’ Because if you want to make a popular show you have to say, ‘Oh, look at the cute little badgers,’” Clarkson said. The Daily Mail.

“But I thought, no, it's a show about agriculture, and you'd lose your core audience, farmers, if you went around saying, 'Look at these cute little animals.'”

He continued: “So I actually called them bastards and showed people what they really do. It’s the truth.

“These animals are no good. Don’t be fooled by Brian May. This is what badgers do. This is the pain they are causing to people who have worked for generations to build a farm that has been wiped out by badgers.”