The great divide in animal welfare- Monday, October 17, 2005
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation editorial by David Walker, October 17, 2005
Both deer in Western Canada and badgers in Britain have attracted the attention of health authorities because of diseases they carry. The very different ways the issues are being handled shows how radically different attitudes to animal welfare are in the two countries.
The deer disorder is chronic wasting disease or CWD. Little is really known about it, including how it is transmitted. But it has some similarities to BSE and that’s enough to cause alarm.
When an infected mule deer was recently found in east central Alberta, wildlife officers planned to shoot the 75 deer known to be in the area and allow a sharp increase in hunting. In Saskatchewan this spring, wildlife officials shot and killed 486 deer after a wild deer with CWD was found. Shooting large numbers of deer is cheaper and easier than culling and testing.
This ‘better safe than sorry’ attitude is noticeably absent in Britain, where an estimated 15 per cent of badgers have tuberculosis and are known to infect cattle which could, in turn, infect humans.
TB, once a killer of thousands, is rare, thanks largely to control measures including testing and slaughter of infected animals, especially cattle. But the incidence of TB in cattle has started to rise again and the badger is seen as the main culprit.
Culling would seem an obvious solution, and as badgers are traditionally regarded as vermin in the countryside, popular support for such measures might be expected.
But the badger, a relatively large (by UK standards) and readily identified wild mammal, has a lot of friends, including at least 40 badger welfare groups which can count badger protection legislation among their past victories.
Needless to say, badgers aren’t being culled and little progress has been made in slowing down the increase in the incidence of bovine TB.
No doubt many Brits will shake their heads over the attempts of Canadians to blast their way out of their CWD challenge. Canadians will wonder how far Brits will go in pandering to the needs of animal welfare advocates.
For CBC commentary, I'm David Walker, an agricultural economist in Edmonton
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