Organisations on both sides of the badger culling debate are mobilising ahead of trial culls which are set to go ahead in areas of the South-west from June this year.  

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The culls will test the efficacy of the government's chosen methodology of 'free-shooting' badgers, which forms part of its bovine TB control strategy. However, a number of eminent scientists and naturalists, including the authors of the RBCT study upon which much of the government's evidence has been based, have come out against the policy. They believe culling will prove inhumane, ineffective and expensive.

Team Badger, a coalition of wildlife and conservation NGOs has recorded over 200,000 signatures on its petition against badger culling and has encouraged supporters to write to their MPs and the NFU to contest the government and industry narrative on culling.

Meanwhile, the NFU has relaunched its 'TB Free England' website, which features posters that can be shared via social media sites and a prominent 'Cattle counter' showing the number of cattle culled in the past five years due to bTB regulations. The Badger Trust has been highly critical of claims made by the union on its campaign posters.

Defra has also organised a series of Twitter Q&A sessions, during which its top scientists have fielded questions relating to bovine TB and badger culling. The next and final session is scheduled for Wednesday 24 April at 1pm; Defra Chief Scientist Ian Boyd will discuss the science behind the government's badger cull designs.

However, with a march against the cull planned for 1st June in London and the entry of a high street retailer into the PR battle, the campaign against badger culling appears to be gaining momentum. In support of Animal Aid, which is part of the Team Badger Coalition, cosmetics retailer Lush announced this week that it has joined the campaign against badger culling.

Lush Cosmetics has funded animal welfare and rights causes in the past, including campaigns against fox hunting. Customers at Lush stores across the country will have the opportunity to write to government policy minister Oliver Letwin MP, warning that the Conservatives risk losing support in council elections in May through their relentless pursuit of badger culling.

In October 2012, shortly after trial culls in Gloucestershire and Somerset were postponed, MPs debated and voted on the badger culling policy; voting in Parliament saw the government defeated by 147 to just 28 votes.

Hilary Jones, ethics director at Lush Cosmetics said on Monday, "It is a huge mystery why this cull is going ahead despite all the usual checks and balances of science and democracy pointing clearly to the need to abandon this flawed and unpopular idea. There is a clue in the title "BOVINE TB' ; Let's get back to solving this at a cattle farming level, instead of scapegoating badgers."

Kate Fowler, Head of Campaigns at Animal Aid added, "The proposed badger cull is without doubt politically motivated. Science does not support it and the public does not want it. The Welsh Assembly Government has chosen to vaccinate badgers, not kill them, but this government has instead opted for an unethical, unscientific and unpopular cull of England's badgers.

"If it won't listen to sound science, and if it continues to ride roughshod over the wishes of the electorate, then voters will be heard through the ballot box. Thousands of badgers’ lives depend on the Conservatives being voted out."