WELL, yes, those who oppose a badger cull (Echo, August 20) will, as Karen Snellock rightly points out, continue to be “vilified”. That, unfortunately, is the name of the game.

And a powerful farming lobby (with its vested interests of course) ensures that such vilification will carry on unabated.

But although many people will be sympathetic with farmers, it might well be the case that in doing so, it will only serve to to make matters worse so far as getting a solution to this ongoing debacle.

Being sympathetic isn’t going solve this particular problem.

All it does is to reinforce the idea that badger culling is right. When it fact, it is patently wrong.

As this correspondent also points out, it is “glaringly obvious” that badgers are not the problem. And never has been. It is the way that cattle are kept that is the problem.

No, farmers have been in denial for decades when it comes to the issue of TB. Ditto, the NFU.

The only way forward is as this correspondent also suggests, is to vaccinate the cattle. Killing the badger population is merely window dressing. Something to appease the farmers.

After all, even if every single badger were to be exterminated in the whole county of Dorset, do they really believe that In doing so it will mean the end of TB in cattle? Trouble is, far too many farmers actually believe that such a scenario will come to pass.

And that is a much bigger problem than the issue of TB itself!

Andrew Martin

Abbotsbury Road

Weymouth