Gassing badgers: the "humane" way

So  Princess Anne, one of Britain's leading farmers, has observed the recent attempts at culling with farmers and other paid sharpshooters blasting away at the poor buggers, and noted that it didn't work. So she cites gassing them instead, even though this has also been tried before and likewise been shown to be ineffective. She says it is a "humane" method, though we have to wonder whether her meaning of the word is the same as ours.


I remember a professional race horse trainer commenting on the killing of a horse which had broken its leg falling after a jump. Seeking no doubt to reassure us punters, he pointed out that breaking a bone doesn't actually hurt a horse- almost immediately afterwards they feed- you wouldn't do that if you were in severe pain, would you? Well, I wouldn't, but maybe they would. I believe the trainer was referring to a standard stress response seen in many animals. But horses are possessed of a very similar nervous system as regarding pain response to humans- that is to say a broken bone is agonising to us- and them. There is simply no reason to assume otherwise.


So when the great Princess tells us gassing badgers is humane, and they just "go to sleep" I wonder if that's really true. I do know that there are better ways of reducing TB in cattle than by exterminating badgers, however humanely it is carried out, but that it is expensive (I'm talking about immunisation) and would eat into the all-important profits of the farmers. And there's your problem. This is about money, and making as much of it as possible. And if Princess Anne and her fellow farmers have to kill every one of them to maintain their profits, if we let them, they will.