Madam,

In response to Cathy Beck’s letter ‘Badger killing is a knee-jerk reaction’, I totally agree with her that it is a devastating problem for farmers, but unless you are in this situation every day, you cannot begin to understand the stress that it inflicts on the farming community and their families.

It is like sitting on a time bomb and not knowing when it will go off.Some facts need to be highlighted. We already have a cull, over 36,000 head of cattle were slaughtered in England and Wales in 2015 alone. Cattle cannot be moved until they are pre-movement tested. Should a reactor be found then all movements are stopped until you have two clear tests, which at best would take four months.

This in turn has huge implications when surplus stock cannot be sold creating welfare and cash flow problems. It has been proven in Ireland, Australia and New Zealand that you have to control TB in wildlife. Badgers have no natural predators which is why we have seen a major decline in ground nesting birds and hedgehogs. We would not be in this situation if the then agriculture minister at the Welsh Assembly, Elin Jones, had been allowed to carry out the cull in the hot-spot in north Pembrokeshire five years ago.

Since then it has spread up from Boncath to Newcastle Emlyn, Llandysul, Pontsian, Mydroilyn, Dihewyd and now it’s on neighbouring farms in the Aeron Valley.

As farmers we have nothing against clean badgers, so what we need is a cull in hotspots and round herd breakdowns to stop it spreading to clean areas.

In other words, short term pain for long-term gain.

Yours etc

Aeron Jenkins

Talsarn

Lampeter.