Sir - I hope very much that Worcester City Council will vote to prohibit the culling of badgers on its land after over 1,000 local people signed a petition calling for such a ban ("Calls to prevent badger culling", Worcester News, November 22nd).

Badger cull protester Anna Frankel is right that the culling is "unscientific, inefficient and inhumane" and there is widespread scientific opinion that it will do nothing to prevent TB in cattle.

However, it is also important to remember that this wanton slaughter of wildlife is not being done out of any love of cows.

This is because fewer than 40,000 dairy cows are killed annually in the UK because of bovine TB, which is less than 10% of the 450,000 that are put to death each year, with more than 100,000 being killed due to infertility,

120,000 because of mastitis and lameness and the remaining 200,000 because they have become too old to be efficient milk producers.

Naturally cows can live to be up to 25 years old, but the dairy industry slaughters them when they are only 5 to 7 years of age, and 100,000 male calves are killed annually on dairy farms, shortly after birth, because they are of no use for producing milk.

All this suffering and slaughter because humans want to drink a product that is really meant for calves!

And all totally unnecessary when we can all live perfectly healthily without consuming milk, meat or any other animal products.

Ronald Lee

Communications Officer

Worcestershire Vegans & Veggies