This is a national issue which will be of direct concern to the people of Gateshead Council should DEFRA "roll out" its culling policy in 2015.

The object of the petition is to ensure that Gateshead Council's badger population is as safe as possible from slaughter and that the already available injectable badger vaccine against bTB is used in as many cases as possible.

We ask this because we believe the culling policy is inhumane (DEFRA's measurement of "humaneness" is to time the screams of wounded badgers), inefficient (previous culls showed an increase in bTB because of badger movement) and unscientific (the majority of scientific opinion hold that a cull will have "no meaningful result").

To preserve the integrity of this petition please only sign it if you live, work or study in the Gateshead Council area.

For details of badger petitions in other parts of England, please contact B-R-A-V-E http://www.b-r-a-v-e.co.uk

We, the undersigned, call on Gateshead Council to prohibit the culling of badgers on council-owned land and invest in vaccination programmes locally. We ask this because we believe culling to be inhumane, inefficient and unscientific.