As government-backed plans for trial badger culls in areas of Gloucestershire and Somerset get underway, opinion remains just as polarised on whether the policy will prove effective. Opponents maintain the badger cull, which forms part of Defra’s bovine TB eradication policy, is a bloody, archaic and doctrinal response to the devastating livestock disease, which they assure will prove costly, inhumane and ineffective.

Despite two court rulings in July and September, when judges deemed the cull to be legal, conservationists have said the cull’s legality does not reflect its efficacy. Following its defeat in the Court of Appeal on 11th September, the badger Trust lamented that “legislation in this area has not kept pace with developments in the understanding of how TB works; the spread of disease as a result of culling; badger social behaviour; or TB vaccination possibilities.”

Following the announcement on Monday (17th September) that Natural England had issued the first licence for a pilot badger cull in Gloucestershire, and plans to issue a second for Somerset shortly, one of the cull’s principal critics Sir David Attenborough said the policy is the unfortunate result of badgers having come into “conflict with short-term economic and political interests.”

The wildlife documentarian and respected naturalist is supported in his assertions by the vast majority of scientists who contributed to the Randomised Badger Cullling Trials, on which much of Defra’s supporting evidence for its current policy is based. Lord Krebs, who devised and oversaw the trial between 1997 and 2008 has condemned the current proposals as “a crazy scheme.”

In 2010, the RBCT trial’s authors concluded, "Our findings show the reductions in cattle TB incidence achieved by repeated badger culling were not sustained in the long term after culling ended and did not offset the financial costs of culling. These results, combined with evaluation of alternative culling methods, suggest that badger culling is unlikely to contribute effectively to the control of cattle TB in Britain."

Even Defra’s document Key conclusions from the meeting of scientific experts, which forms the basis of its claims that the cull is “science-led,” is rife with caveats; the experts consulted agreed that “In the medium to long term, vaccination in an area could reduce the disease level in the local badger population and thus the risk to local cattle from badger-to-cattle transmission [and is] is highly unlikely to have negative effects.” Whereas, “Benefits [from culling] would accrue over time and would be relatively small (if any) in earlier years. The average net benefit over 9 years would be… about 3-22%, with a central figure of 12.4%”

Lord Krebs told the BBC on Monday that he had grave misgivings about the government’s chosen methodology of shooting free-running badgers and warned that there will be no way of knowing when 70 per cent of badgers in a cull area have been killed. 70 per cent is the figure thought to be necessary to have a positive effect on TB breakdowns.

Both sides of the debate over culling agree that cattle measures must form the central part of any bTB control strategy. Lord Krebs added, "I would go down the vaccination and biosecurity route rather than this crazy scheme that may deliver very small advantage, may deliver none.”

Prominent cull opponents Brian May and the RSPCA have called for a boycott of dairy products from the West Country, where the trial culls are to be undertaken. They said they intend to demonstrate how ethically unpalatable the policy is (opinion polls have revealed that a significant majority of the British public opposes the cull) and believe that farmers should feel the "commercial consequences" of their decision to take part in culling.

A coalition of other animal welfare groups has joined calls for a boycott, stating that cull opponents would avoid contributing to the West Country’s rural economy for as long as culling is pursued. Nevertheless, supermarket chains Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Morrisons have said they will continue to stock milk from cull areas. Waitrose, Asda, Marks and Spencer and the Cooperative said their milk does not come from cull regions. The wildlife campaigners have also organised a last-minute petition for which they aim to get 100,000 signatories to secure a debate in Parliament.

The Hunt Saboteurs Organisation, which has worked throughout the hunting ban to oppose hunts which violate anti-fox hunting laws, has pledged to rally activists to disrupt badger shoots through non-violent direct action.