Yesterday Queen guitarist and animal welfare champion, Brian May, shoulder-to-shoulder with the heads of every major animal welfare group, launched the Team Badger campaign in London with a giant billboard poster on Cromwell Road, at one of the capital’s busiest junctions.
The Team Badger campaign is an unprecedented coalition of the UK’s leading animal welfare organisations, including the Save Me, International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), Network for Animals, Political Animal Lobby, Badger Trust, The league, Born Free Foundation, Humane Society International, David Shepherd Wildlife Trust, Animals Aid, VIVA, Care for the Wild International, Stroud 100, Gloucestershire Against the Cull, Conservatives against the Cull, PETA and RETHINK bovine TB, who have all united against the Government’s imminent cull of badgers in England, which it is undertaking in an attempt to address Bovine TB in cattle.
Brian May said, “This cull will not solve the farmers’ problem; it must be abandoned in favour of vaccination – which is the only long-term hope for eradicating bovine TB. This billboard is the tip of the iceberg. We won’t rest until every man, woman and child in Britain knows about the tragedy unfolding in their countryside, and the Government realises it is making a terrible mistake.”
The Cromwell Road billboard marks the start of a coordinated campaign to stop the planned cull of badgers in England, with the aim of raising public awareness and collecting signatures on a government petition to force a debate in parliament.
Brian Davies, founder of Network for Animals said, “The Government have steam-rolled ahead with their inhumane and impractical approach of shooting badgers which is due to start imminently. This is despite previous research by The Independent Scientific Group (ISG) on bovine TB, which cost tax-payers nearly £50 million, proving that culling badgers could actually increase the spread of the disease. We need to work together now to stop this madness.”
The consortium of charities has started a new petition on the Government’s own website – titled ‘Stop the Badger Cull’. The portal for those wishing to sign the petition is at teambadger.org.
“Our message is simple”, said May, “Don’t let this happen. Sign the petition. Let your MP know you are opposed. The badger is an iconic symbol of our British wildlife. And every single individual is an intelligent sentient being, part of a family, and with feelings very much like ours. Badgers have been living in the British Isles since thousands of years before Man arrived. Let’s not be the generation that stood by and watched them be slaughtered. Save the badgers for their own sake, and for the world our grandchildren will inherit.”
