I TRUST Dan Sidley, co-founder of Yorkshire Swan Rescue Hospital, knows more about swans than he seems to know about badgers (Badger cull proposal dismay, Soapbox, October 29).

It beggars belief that he has the gall and audacity to preach a sermon to farmers on their hygiene and farming methods. Perhaps a fortnight's working holiday on a stock farm would change his tune and make him realise that farmyards are not hospital wards.

Whatever, farmers are forever being badgered, please pardon the pun, by several countryside pests. Three of the most important that require culling and controlling are badgers, foxes and Defra (the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs).

Ken Holmes, Cliffe Common, Selby.