Just a couple of thoughts,
I know it's the done thing to bash the townies and all that at times like these but first consider a few things;
Our kids used to drop like flies to TB until we pasturised milk, ie, humans caught TB from cattle, nobody suggested farmers passed it to cows and then kids got it, cows passed it to each other then to us.
The Irish tried eradication of badgers, it utterly failed! Completely unsuccessful! In fact, not only did they wipe out loads of a protected species but the survivors moved around more, so any problems they caused should have spread, but the anticipated TB problems didn't move with the badgers. Those piebald bio-warfare units didn't carry TB to new areas, if they are vectors then they aren't very efficient.
TB spreads most efficiently as a pneumonic disease, ie it is passed on by the infected mammal's breath, (not usually in urine, so no old-wives tales of badger pee please, but it can survive very well in plasma based body fluids eg blood, mucous, cerebro-spinal fluid, milk, semen - one of the reasons to wear latex gloves in the gralloch). An infected badger could pass on the bacterium (mycobacterium tuberculosis or mycobacterium bovis and a couple of others which are rare in this country) if it coughed in a cow's face, but what is more likely to cough in a cow's face? Another cow? What if a farmer faced with an isolation order on his farm just waited a bit to see what developed? A couple of cows with early stage, highly infective TB locked in a byre with lots of other TB-susceptible bovines? But it was a badger what did it, right?
I'm not saying all farmers break the law, just with the pressure on them some might/will take chances, and I caught a few who did when I was a country-based cop, illegal movements, burying carcasses without reporting to vet etc...
And one last big one - our beloved deer carry TB too - what would your reaction be if the NFU demanded a total cull of them in your area? Some of the more extreme anti-TB NFU reps have already suggested exactly that. Your stalking blocks which you have spent time and money on, or your syndicate wiped out, for an unproven suspected, possible transmission route?
Still want to wipe out all badgers?
Do you want to set the precedent?
Image is everything nowadays people, and looking as if all we want to do is slaughter wildlife on the basis of dubious evidence plays right into the hands of the antis just when they are losing the battle (LACS membership fell by 20% since the hunt ban - now that was a BAD piece of law-making, but at least something positive may have resulted from it).
So with all due respect to you Swampy, I won't be signing your petition, you obviously feel strongly about the issue, but so do I.
I am one of ZanuLabour's most persistent critics, but I believe they got it right this time, perhaps for the wrong reason, but wiping out badgers won't wipe our TB in cattle and it will make all country sports people who support a cull look like bloodthirsty idiots.