As debate around the badger cull heats up in England, following last week's airing of leaked findings from the Independent Expert Panel tasked with assessing pilot culls in Somerset and Gloucestershire, the BBC has admitted that it had made a mistake over reporting on badger culling in Ireland.

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The IEP findings, leaked to the BBC on Thursday, show that cull companies fell well short of targets for humaneness and number of badgers killed.

Yesterday, the BBC issued a statement accepting that it had wrongly suggested that culling in Ireland had reduced levels of bovine TB in the country, when there was no explicit evidence to support this. The statement was made in a BBC report on Ireland's badger cull in May 2013. Cull supporters in Whitehall and the NFU have frequently used examples of wildlife culls from other countries to justify the cull policy, though experts have said that these cases, including culls of wildlife in France and New Zealand, and culls of badgers in Ireland, are not directly comparable to the English situation.

The BBC accepted that the language used in its article had not been sufficiently precise, as it suggested that the badger cull might be a factor in helping control the disease, when this was scientifically unproven. Although data did show a decline in the number of cattle infected with TB in Ireland, there is no conclusive evidence to show that culling badgers has played a part in the decline.

Badger Trust spokesperson Dominic Dyer said on Thursday, "This decision raises serious concerns over statements made by the Government to MPs and the public that the large scale culling of badgers in the Republic of Ireland is an effective example of TB reduction in cattle that should be followed in the UK.

"The shocking thing is, the government has been aware from the beginning that the scientific evidence does not underpin the claim that culling badgers reduces bovine TB, but they have continued to make this claim because they've been allowed to get away with it. The badger cull is a deeply unpopular policy and we believe that even more people would oppose it than already do, if the truth was told consistently. So it's very important the government bases all its statements on peer reviewed evidence and not spin the story to suit its own political agenda."

Also on Thursday, Somerset-based Secret World Wildlife Rescue released the results of two post-mortem examinations carried out on two badgers brought in from the cull zone during the Somerset pilot cull. The charity said it had chosen to wait until the findings of the IEP were known before releasing its results.  

Although one of the badgers was deemed to have been a 'humane' kill by Defra-set standards, the other had been shot in the spine – outside of the Defra-proposed target zone – which the pathologist considered unlikely to have resulted in immediate loss of consciousness and death. There was no evidence to suggest that a follow up shot had been made to ensure that the already injured animal died quickly.

Both the badgers assessed at Secret World appeared to have been in good condition, with no evidence of tuberculosis at post mortem or upon subsequent culture. TB levels were not assessed in either badgers or cattle in the cull zones last year.

A Secret World spokesperson said these findings are consistent with the leaked findings of the IEP and Natural England monitoring documents released under a Freedom of Information Request last week, which showed that, of nine badgers killed during monitoring, three were not killed 'cleanly', with shots missing the target zone.

Protests against the cull, which have been ongoing around England, are set to continue, with a large demonstration expected outside Parliament next week, to coincide with a backbench debate about the IEP's findings and government proposals to roll out culling.