Badger cull could be scuppered by health and safety Gloucestershire County Councillors acknowledged concerns that night-time shooting of badgers involving high velocity rifles brought serious safety and policing issues. They voted for a full Council review of current policy which allows tenant farmers to take part in the Gloucestershire cull. The committee also recommended that the Cabinet Member responsible for farms requests tenants taking part in the cull to carry out a risk assessment to re-assure the Council that the public would not be put at undue risk. A spokesman said Gloucestershire County Council have 80 farms in the county overall, a very small proportion of which are in the reported culling area Forest of Dean councillors have already voted to ban the cull on the authority's land. The motion read: "The Forest of Dean District Council must make public safety and the care of our wildlife a priority and to this end this council must endeavour to make contact with all other land owners within its boundary to request that they refuse any culling of badgers on their land." But the decision is more of a gesture than a serious blow to the culling trials for it owns only about 15 acres of land. Liz Gaffer, spokeswoman for Gloucestershire Against Badger Shooting, said the council owes it to the public to ban the badger cull on land owned by the taxpayer. We are pleased that the councillors have taken this matter seriously and given due weight to public opinion in deciding to review the existing policy. As seen through the petition, the public are increasingly ready to say that they are concerned about this cull and we urge everyone against it to let the council know so that they make the right decision quickly. Under the licence conditions of the cull, 70 per cent of the land area must be willing to take part for the shooting to go ahead. The Stop the Cull campaign claim that a growing number of farmers in West Gloucestershire are pulling out of the trial. They said if the farms owned by the council cannot get the go ahead it could scupper the trial. The more farmers pull out, the more likely it is to come to an end. However the Department for the Environment Food and Rural Affairs insisted that the council cannot stop tenant farmers from carrying out the cull on their land. "Gloucestershire County Council can't actually stop the cull going ahead on land that it has rented out, providing tenants have a five year tenancy or more with no break clause (i.e their tenancy exceeds the duration of the cull)," said a spokesman. Naturally any farmer who has signed up will have been required to carry out appropriate risk assessments before a license was granted. Mark Jones, Executive Director, Humane Society International, said farmers will follow the council in refusing to take part in the cull. We sincerely hope that other landowners follow their lead and that the government now takes stock of this disasterous policy and thinks again. Support for this cull is falling away in every quarter, it's time for DEFRA to abandon the killing and support instead genuinely science-led strategies that will help eradicate bovine TB in cattle. Meanwhile the Hunt Saboteurs Association says it has had an influx of new members and supporters in the past few weeks as public anger has mounted against the cull. New members will be joining local saboteur groups and travelling to the cull zones to engage in peaceful, legal direct action against the slaughter' as soon as it starts, said a spokeswoman. Many hunt saboteurs are veterans of the Krebs and Welsh badger culls and will be able to share their expertise of how to safely campaign against the armed killers, the HSA claimed.