YOUR article "New TB vaccine for badgers" (March 31) quotes Richard Haddock, who farms at Kingswear, South Devon, as saying: "Vaccination [of badgers] is a total sop to keep people happy and to keep farmers at bay. The quicker we are allowed to get on with a cull of sick animals in sick setts and sick areas, the better."

His phrase "keeping farmers at bay" implies a confrontation of their own making in which some resent not getting their own way despite having no justification for their militancy.

Your article included – unwittingly perhaps – many of the imponderables still outstanding in the fight against bovine tuberculosis. For instance, how are sick animals to be identified? Also, the means of detecting sick setts are so far impracticable in the field. And how would farmers get on with all that then cull the badgers, or do they expect someone else to do that at another someone else's expense? And who is volunteering to administer it all?

There is indeed a strong case for having many tools in the box, as the National Farmers' Union spokesman put it, but each must be tested and certified safe and fit for purpose; culling has not been so certified.

Your author, while not quoting sources, says farmers fear vaccination could serve to displace sick and startled animals, driving them further afield, but they should also consider the displacement effect of trapping and shooting, possibly adding to the known danger of perturbation of badger populations.

The writer also thinks the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats have said they would allow a cull of sick badgers to stop the relentless progress of the disease when it clearly would not, but make matters worse.

In the meantime we await with not much confidence a detailed, peer-reviewed paper from "Tory shadow ministers" describing what you report as the technology that identifies infected setts, covering the design, the proven detection rate, the means of using any results – and, again, who would pay for it all?

David Williams

Chairman, Badger Trust

Living in the past

SO according to Peter Wyatt (letter, April 6) I display "a profound and lamentable ignorance of English Common Law and have no idea of how the Napoleonic system used in most European Union states works".

Oh dear. It appears that the 10 years I worked in a sector of the legal system requiring knowledge of English Common, Civil, and Statutory Law was a complete waste of time. And then there is all that time I spent reading the books of John Mortimer and John Grisham!

Peter uses the usual UKIP ploy of bypassing an argument by making sneering comments about anyone who disagrees with his opinions or UKIP's policies.

In his reference to Napoleonic Law he tries to raise the age-old spectre of the Bogeyman of Europe.

I think it demonstrates exactly how far in the past he and his party live. Perhaps not centuries, but definitely decades.

Karl Lawrence

Brixham

Unselfish concern?

WHEN leaders of industry decide to join the political debate and support one side only, we have the right to ask for additional information.

It must be assumed that they all receive well in excess of 10 times the national average income.

Those of us who get less than the average, in my case all derived from government-sponsored sources, have little chance of reducing our tax bill by having it paid through a personal equity company or a foreign tax haven.

Would the chief executives of our largest firms be willing to disclose their personal tax arrangements, so that the rest of us can make a realistic assessment of their unselfish concern for the national economy?

Bob Rundle

St Austell

Vote Labour, but...

DO you wish to vote Labour?

1. If you wish to ignore the fact that Gordon Brown has plunged this country into a dire financial crisis...

2, If you wish to leave your children and their children with massive taxes to pay for Labour's profligate spending that has decimated the country's finances...

3. If you wish to ignore the fact that Blair's acceptance of the European Council of Human Rights legislation, despite learned advice, has been shown to destroy our legal system such that justice is no longer seen to be served...

4. If you wish to forget the promised referendum in respect of the European Union...

5) If you wish to be a pensioner in poverty when you retire, unable to heat and eat, because of a state pension that is recognised to be below the poverty level...

6) If you wish to pay Brown's £20,000 death tax...

7) If you wish to pay total disrespect for all those who gave their lives in the pursuit of well being for this country...

...Then why don't you go ahead and vote Labour?

M H Wadmore

Delabole

Study in contrasts

WHEN comparing leaders of the two main parties, Gordon Brown looks the part of a strong minister, but David Cameron comes across like a "born again Yuppie" pretending that class is no longer an issue in the Tory Party.

Paul Raybould

Torquay