Ban slapped on RSPCA ad claiming badgers in cull areas face extermination

The ad featured an image of a syringe and bullet at the top of the page with a headline reading “Vaccinate or exterminate?” before text continued: “The UK government wants to shoot England’s badgers. We want to vaccinate them – and save their lives.”

It continued: “The Government’s proposed badger cull could begin at any time, despite scientific evidence that slaughtering thousands of England’s badgers is unlikely to stop the spread of bovine TB in cattle. Will you help us continue our campaign to stop the cull?”

Conservative MP Simon Hart, the Farmers’ Union of Wales, Welsh Conservative AM Antoinette Sandbach and 116 members of the public complained about the ad, with most saying the term “exterminate” was inaccurate and alarmist. The RSPCA said the word “exterminate” was used carefully and deliberately, saying it had “a literal meaning of total eradication and a common use meaning of killing on a massive scale”.

It said the proposed cull of badgers in Somerset and Gloucestershire was based on an assertion that at least 70 per cent of the estimated badger population would need to be killed in a given area to have the desired impact on the spread of bovine TB.

It said information from the Government’s policy on bovine TB and badger control in England highlighted that it was possible that more than 70 per cent of the badger population in the pilot areas would be killed, and there was “a real risk that badger populations in some areas of the cull could be wiped out completely”.

The RSPCA said it was possible that in certain areas within the cull zones the loss of badgers could be total. The Advertising Standards Authority felt consumers were likely to interpret the claim, along with the text “The UK government wants to shoot England’s badgers”, to mean all badgers would be eradicated in the cull areas.