The Badger Trust has mounted a legal challenge against Defra's badger cull, which is set to resume in the two 'trial zones' of Somerset and Gloucestershire this summer.

On Tuesday, the Trust announced that it had made an application for judicial review at the High Court to challenge the legality of the Defra Secretary's decision to allow culling to continuein two zones, despite the fact that Independent assessors judged the cull to have been a failure on two out of three counts and the concerted opposition of key members of the scientific community.

The Trust will argue that Defra Secretary Owen Paterson has unlawfully failed to put in place any Independent Expert Panel for the planned culling of badgers in Gloucestershire and Somerset in 2014, to oversee the design of data collection and its analysis and interpretation to assess the safety, effectiveness and humaneness of the culling operation. The IEP found that culling in 2013 was inhumane and the shooting methodology being trialled was ineffective, though Farming minister George Eustice revealed last month there are no plans for the appointment of a similar panel this year.

Without independent monitoring, the Trust believes that it would be unlawful for Defra to roll out culling to new areas from 2015; though the Environment Secretary was forced to abandon plans for a roll-out this year, he has expressed the intention to extend badger culling to new areas as part of the government's response to bovine TB.

Badger Trust spokesperson Dominic Dyer commented on Tuesday, "The badger cull policy has been a complete and utter failure on scientific, economic and humaneness grounds. There is no justification for continuing with this failed policy which no longer has the confidence of the public, politicians and increasingly the veterinary and farming industry.

"Owen Paterson made a clear commitment to Parliament and wider public that an independent panel will oversee and evaluate the pilot culls and report back to the Government prior to any decision being taken on the policy being rolled out more widely. It is not acceptable… to now push aside the concerns of both the Independent Expert Panel and the British Veterinary Association, by moving ahead with a further badger cull in Gloucestershire and Somerset this summer without any independent monitoring in place."

Defra came under renewed pressure last week after it was revealed that the department had carried out trials into badger gassing using artificial setts, while ministers and spokespeople maintained that government interest in gassing – which was outlawed in the 1980s – was strictly "desk-based".