The former head of Defra’s Central Science Laboratory, which deals with badger ecology, has criticised the government’s plans to cull badgers in an attempt to tackle bovine TB in England. Chris Cheeseman described plans to press ahead with badger culling, which could begin as soon as the end of this month on trial sites in Gloucestershire and Somerset, as “unacceptable.”

Dr Cheeseman, who was formerly head of wildlife diseases at the Central Science Laboratory, made the comments in support of a campaign by Humane Society International to suspend culling pending the results of an appeal made to the Bern convention, which is charged with the protection of Europe’s wildlife. The appeal may not be heard until October.

Television naturalist Bill Oddie and the deputy head of the RSPCA’s Wildlife Science Department, Colin Booty, have also given their support to the campaign. The debate over culling in England is reaching fever pitch; a separate legal challenge launched by the Badger Trust is set to be heard in the Court of Appeal tomorrow (Tuesday 11th September).

Chris Cheeseman, who’s work in the 1970s included assessing the link between badger TB and TB in cattle, said in a video released by HSI on Friday (7th Seprember), "This government claims that their policy is science-led but I’m afraid it’s not, because the only good science that we have was from the culling trial; the main conclusion of the Independent Scientific Group… was that badger culling can make no meaningful contribution to the control of TB in cattle in Britain.

“[Culling] could lead to the deaths of, using [Defra’s] figures, up to 130,000 badgers over a few years to achieve an overall, at best, 16 percent reduction in cattle TB. Now there are those of us in the scientific community who actually think it [the cull] will make it worse, and I suggest that’s an unacceptable policy."

The RSPCA’s Mark Booty added, "There’s an ethical question about whether one believes it’s right that badgers over large parts of western Britain should be virtually eliminated from huge swathes of the British countryside."

The experts are calling instead for a combination of methods including greater cattle controls and testing, biosecurity measures and a vaccination programme, such as was adopted by the Welsh government following a review of the scientific evidence around culling in March this year.

In response to the video, a Defra spokesperson pointed the Key Conclusions from the Meeting of Scientific Experts, which details the potential outcomes of culling and has been agreed upon by several scientific contributors. However, the agreed outcome of the cull is the same as that posited by Dr Cheeseman and the contributors state as their final point, “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. In addition, vaccination is highly unlikely to have negative effects.”

Defra maintains that bovine TB has never been eradicated without first “tackling the wildlife reservoir.” However, the Badger Trust has pointed out that an outbreak after the Second world War was curtailed without resorting to culling.

The disease was behind the slaughter of over 26,000 cattle in 2010. The latest Defra figures on bovine TB, released in August, show “a notable decrease in the incidence rate over the past 6 months”, though Defra said this decrease is “mainly a result of an increased number of tests on unrestricted herds compared to last year.” The provisional May 2012 incidence rate was 3.6 percent, compared to 5.5 percent in May 2011.

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