Part of 2. Questions to the Minister for Rural Affairs and North Wales, and Trefnydd – in the Senedd at 2:29 pm on 15 February 2023.
Diolch, Llywydd. Every year for the last five years, over 10,000 cattle have been slaughtered. Over 50,000 dead due to bovine TB in Wales, and this includes pregnant cows slaughtered due to testing TB positive. A farmer recounted to me the time they watched their heavily pregnant cow slaughtered on farm, using a 12-bore shotgun between the poor animal's eyes, the trigger was pulled. Post death, the pregnant cow uncontrollably spasmed, destroying a heavy gate, the unborn calf writhing inside its dead mother's womb as it suffocated to death. It's something akin to watching someone die from poison, they said. It was horrendous to see, and clearing up all the blood and smashed gate afterwards was just as punishing. That's how the farmer described it—no compassion for the cow, the calf, and certainly not for the farmer. 'Better I get more distressed than my cow', they add, 'I get to walk away from it, she doesn't; it's the least I can do.' This heavy mental burden is being put on our farmers, especially when it happens more than once. That farmer told me how three pregnant cows were shot, one after another. 'It just about killed me; I will never forget what I saw'—that's how they described it. In-womb TB transmission is rare, so why are these traumatic events allowed to happen? Will the Welsh Government show that compassion and change its policy to allow bovine TB-positive in-calf cows and heifers to isolate and give birth to healthy calves before being humanely slaughtered?