Brian May leads badger flashmob to stop the cull

This May Day (1 May) a badger flash-mob - led by Queen’s Brian May - will descend on the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), protesting the Conservative-led badger cull. 

Brian May will front the flash-mob – dressed as a badger and with a black stripe in his hair – as they dance and call for the badger cull to be replaced by badger vaccination.

The flash-mob will last five minutes as the badgers dance to May’s own version of the YouTube Badgers song (with over 17 million hits) which he has produced about the badger cull and was inspired by Queen's hit record 'Flash'. Fifty badgers – styled as New Romantics – will spend the morning site-seeing in London before emerging onto Smith Square at noon exactly.

The flash-mob is the climax of an Animal Aid campaign that has run throughout the UK in Lush Cosmetics’ 104 shops nationwide.  The campaign asks the public to vote against the Conservatives in the 2nd May Local Elections (and all future elections) to send a clear electoral message of the unpopularity of the badger cull policy.

Oliver Letwin MP, Minister for Government Policy, has received tens of thousands of postcards from Lush staff and customers telling him that ‘badgers have friends, and those friends have votes.

Brian May comments: “The Government’s determination to go ahead with the badger cull this summer once again proves how misguided and out of step with scientific fact and public opinion it is on this issue. Culling badgers is not the answer to eradicating bovine TB. Not only is the practice inhumane and impractical, it is also proven to be ineffective in tackling the disease, as has been made repeatedly clear by all the leading scientific experts. There is also a viable alternative, which I support: vaccination.”

Hilary Jones, Ethics Director at Lush Cosmetics says: “It is a huge mystery why this cull is going ahead despite all the usual checks and balances of science and democracy pointing clearly to the need to abandon this flawed and unpopular idea.  There is a clue in the title ‘BOVINE TB'. 

"Let's get back to solving this at a cattle farming level, instead of scapegoating badgers for our sloppy and intensive farming practices. The plan is for an indiscriminate free-shooting cull of 70% of the badger population - killing healthy badgers as well as those carrying TB - a species that elicits huge affection from the public and has earned protection under law.  It is time there was some openness and honesty talked about this whole issue.”