FUW warns polticians of RSPCA's 'misleading' badger campaign
THE Farmers' Union of Wales has alerted all AMs and MPs to the RSPCA's "misleading" lobbying campaign encouraging the general public to use the society's website to send politicians a standard e-mail opposing badger culling.
The e-mail claims Defra's public consultation on badger-culling in England prompted a record 47,472 responses with 95 per cent opposed to a cull.
"But it fails to acknowledge the vast majority of those responses were generated by an expensive RSPCA advertising campaign part of which, the Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) ruled, breached advertising standards by using 'untruthful' and 'unsubstantiated' claims," said FUW president Gareth Vaughan.
"Following the ASA's ruling, in response to a formal complaint by the FUW, the then Minister for Local Environment, Marine and Animal Welfare Ben Bradshaw MP admitted this adverse influence would have to be taken into account when considering further deliberations.
"The RSPCA are, therefore, using what they know to be statistics relating to a public consultation that were, in effect, manufactured by their own discredited campaign, in order to influence the political process.
"Moreover, they are actively encouraging the general public to engage in such misleading political lobbying."
Following the ASA ruling, the RSPCA agreed they would not use the untruthful statements in further advertisements. However, they continued to do so on their website for a further 15 months until they were contacted by the Charity Commission on November 12, 2007.
The untrue and unsubstantiated claims the RSPCA continued to use contended most cases of bovine TB are caused by cattle movements which gave people the impression that badgers were being unfairly vilified.
But in February an independent report published in the Royal Society's journal concluded that cattle movements are likely to be responsible for just 16 per cent of bTB herd outbreaks, while "high risk spread is probably the result of cattle and badger interaction".
Mr Vaughan has now written to all AMs and MPs asking them to disregard all e-mails received from the RSPCA's website and to consider the issue of bovine TB control from a holistic perspective.
"Clearly, the issue of badger culling is an emotive one, not least because of the way in which the general public have been misled by the likes of the RSPCA. However, work by Reading University has shown that, when confronted by the facts, the general public take a rational rather than reactionary view as regards badger culling.
"By the mid 1980s, previous holistic approaches that included badger culling had resulted in the virtual eradication of the disease, with just a small number of pockets persisting in localised areas.
"But since then the number of cattle slaughtered annually in the UK as a result of bTB has risen from around 650 to 28,000 - representing an increase of more than 4,000 per cent.
"The economic impacts of bTB for rural communities are severe, and compensation payments have been estimated to represent a fraction of the total losses incurred due to movement restrictions and other costs.
"The University of Exeter has described the long term psychological impact of bTB as being worse than those experienced during the 2001 foot and mouth disease outbreak, and the Chief Veterinary Officer for Wales has described the impact of the disease as being akin to FMD in slow motion."
Mr Vaughan has also written to Charity Commission chair Dame Suzi Leather urging the commission to take action against the RSPCA immediately to prevent it from once again distorting the political process through the use of misleading and untruthful information.
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