The Badger Trust has issued scathing criticism of a new scheme, proposed by a pair of West-Country dairy farmers, who advocate gassing certain sets of badgers, instead of conducting randomised badger culling by ‘free shooting.’ The Trust has publicly distanced itself from the newly-formed Badger Welfare Association (BWA).

The BWA rejects Defra’s proposals for badger culling by shooting free-roaming badgers, trials of which are set to take place later this year in Gloucestershire and Somerset as part of Defra’s bovine TB eradication programme. Critics of Defra’s proposals claim the government’s culling plans will prove inhumane, ineffective at reducing TB and will cost farmers engaged in culling much more than official costings show.

The farmers behind the BWA scheme are pushing for gassing of TB-infected badger setts, which they claim to be able to identify. However, the expertise to which Bryan Hill, one of the BWA founders, lays claim have not been confirmed.

Speaking last week, Badger Trust spokesperson Jack Reedy said, “In effect, this would be ‘reactive killing’, which extensive and expensive research published in 2007 proved does not work and could make matters worse by causing the disease to spread among neighbouring farms. So serious is the risk associated with this aspect that research into it had to be abandoned.”

He added, “The presence of disease in a sett is not proof that the animals inside are infected, let alone whether they are among the very small proportion that are infected enough, i.e. infectious, to pass on the disease.”

Gassing badgers with carbon monoxide as a method of killing the animals has already been rejected by Defra. Nevertheless, the Somerset-based BWA proposes to use this approach. The Badger Trust responded to their proposals in a statement, “Unless this method is properly validated through the usual scientific review process including rigorous field trials licensed by Natural England, any application of it would be in clear breach of the Badger Protection Act of 1992, attracting fines of up to £5,000 and/or a six-month prison sentence per offence.

“Each badger gassed would be a separate offence. If any gassing or other killing can be proved to have taken place already, Badger Trust will take every action possible to secure the conviction of those responsible. In addition, a licence from Natural England would be required to interfere with the badgers or their habitats.”

Whilst Bovine TB remains a devastating disease affecting large parts of the UK, opponents of the proposed culls, currently subject to a legal challenge which has been expedited at Defra’s request, maintain that cattle control measures hold the key to reducing the disease’s prevalence. According to Defra figures, after nine years of culling badgers under ideal conditions, the rate of new TB incidence is expected to be reduced by less than 20 per cent.  

Authors of the Randomised Badger Culling Trial (RBCT), conducted by the previous government and the source of much of the current government’s evidence used to support the English badger cull, concluded, “While badgers are clearly a source of cattle TB, careful evaluation of our own and others’ data indicates that badger culling can make no meaningful contribution to cattle TB control in Britain. Indeed, some policies under consideration are likely to make matters worse rather than better.

“Weaknesses in cattle testing regimes mean that cattle themselves contribute significantly to the persistence and spread of disease in all areas where TB occurs, and in some parts of Britain are likely to be the main source of infection”

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