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Dear Michael Gove, I have been living in Britain since the Ice Age and present no risk to human health whatsoever.

With prison officers on strike, a loss of 400 steel jobs and now the risk of a 'no deal' Brexit which could quite literally lead to it raining space rocks, I am at a loss to understand why slow-moving omnivores like myself are considered such a threat that pre-emptive murder is your only option.

Your department justifies the slaughter of, on average, 54 of my people every day by claiming we are responsible for the spread of bovine tuberculosis in cows, a disease which is potentially deadly and which stops infected cattle being traded with the European Union.

This is despite the fact that TB does not kill, or even damage the health of, most cattle who contract it. Your own department said in 2013 that fears about eating TB-infected meat were "irresponsible scaremongering", and the Food Standards Agency says there are "no known cases of people contracting TB from eating meat".

Furthermore, bovine TB can be spread by dogs, cat, foxes, alpacas, llamas, goats, pigs, and deer. It is thought 96% of infections are spread by cattle themselves.

Which leads me to assume that perhaps it is the colour of my fur that means I alone am being marked for death. If I were beige, Mr Gove, I would look the same as, and be no more harmful than, one of the Queen's corgis, and significantly less likely to s*** in your slippers.

(Image: Getty Images Europe)

I and my home have legal protection under the Protection of Badgers Act 1992, which makes it an offence for anyone to wilfully kill, injure or take a badger. People are not allowed to keep me as a pet, nor to kill me just for the hell of it.

This did not seem to cause successive Tory governments a moment's pause before sending out death squads which last year claimed 19,724 of my kind. Nor did it stop when, following a judicial review, you personally approved 11 new cull licenses which could mean another 40,000 of my brethren have a cap popped in their ass in a state-sponsored extermination campaign.

it is also worth noting that you are not culling any of my fellow mustelids, such as weasels, otters, stoats, ferrets and pine martens. It is just me, out of all the animals that could spread TB, and even though I haven't hurt you.

(Image: PA)

The government has spent £500m fighting bovine TB since 2008, much of it in compensating farmers for ordering the wholesale slaughter of their herds. In 2013, almost 90 cattle were killed for this reason every single day, with an average cost to each farm of £34,000.

The government repays only £20,000 of this, leaving farmers to bear the rest. These farmers have lost a quarter of a million cattle this way in the past decade, despite the fact most didn't have TB and a vaccination has been available since 2010.

This is because the EU's approved blood test cannot tell the difference between a vaccinated cow and one with full-blown TB, making it impossible to sell our meat into the single market. A more precise test is available, but the EU has failed to adopt it.

And even though Britain sells £400m of beef to the EU every year, and the EU's stupid rules have cost the nation half a billion pounds, the UK government has failed to get the EU to adopt the new test. And now you've gone and led a campaign to leave the EU, which means our chances of persuading them have dropped to zero.

I would give you a slow hand clap, but I am too busy being amazed at just how stupid you are.

(Image: PA)

Of course once you are out of the EU you will be able to make your own rules. But unfortunately you will lose all the beef sales, as well as watching thousands of farms go to the wall, if you don't continue to meet EU guidelines. So what you've got here is a bunch of inconvenient, unscientific rules that you no longer write but must abide by.

The reason for all of this is that a hundred years ago milk was drunk raw, people who drank it got TB, and people with TB often died.

In 2018, most milk is pasteurised, people who drink it do not get TB, and people who do have TB usually don't die.

Now, I don't want you to think that just because I am the only animal who has ever figured out how to eat a hedgehog I am patronising you, but the facts do very much point towards the fact that TB is not a problem and badgers do not need to be killed.

(Image: AFP)

It's a pity you've had enough of experts, because scientists agree that the best way to stop the spread of bovine TB is better hygiene on farms and a vaccination programme, as the main cause of infected cattle is other cattle.

It also works out significantly cheaper to the taxpayer than paying masked men with guns to tromp about the countryside late at night shooting creatures that prefer to avoid them, along with police officers to protect them in case any of the more-sensible humans wish to point out the ridiculousness of the situation.

The Wildlife Trust says it costs £82 to trap and vaccinate a badger. In Wales, authorities have spent £76,000-a-time killing 5 badgers, all of whom tested negative for TB at post mortem.

The Badger Trust says that TB could be caused by the over- intensification of the cattle industry, and then passed to badgers. The International Fund for Animal Welfare calls the cull "irrational". The Born Free Foundation says TB continues to spread.

Killing 60,000 members out of a population of 200,000 in the space of two years would, among humans, normally be called a genocide.

(Image: Nick Webster/Mirrorpix)

Would it help to imagine I was a rhinoceros, a humpbacked whale, or an orang utan? There is no good reason to kill any of them, and when they are you are unequivocal in your condemnation.

Calling it a badger 'cull' implies there is scientific evidence for it. Seeing as the killing is inhumane, unscientific and completely ineffective in eradicating a disease which isn't harmful and I am not the main cause of anyway, it is more accurate to call this murder - the unlawful, premeditated taking of another's life without the mitigation of self-defence.

I like to think the best of humans, Mr Gove, even though 45,000 of my species are killed on your roads every year. But I note that the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents says 103 people are injured annually in the UK by their face flannel.

My question is this: if you people can't cope with a washcloth, shouldn't you be a bit more thoughtful with cars, culls, and countries?

Yours in eternal hope,

Brock