With 'trial' badger culls expected to start in the UK as early as this weekend, and public opinion deeply divided over the government's chosen policy for bovine TB reduction, Environment Secretary Owen Paterson has reiterated his firm support for the cull and said he would like to see badger culling continue in England for up to 25 years, in order to completely eradicate the devastating cattle disease.  

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Trial culls in Somerset and Gloucestershire are set to determine whether shooters firing at free-running badgers can reduce badger populations in a given area by 70 percent. The trial licenses are valid from Saturday (1st June). If the methodology is deemed to be effective and humane by an independent panel, the strategy will be rolled out across England. The trial culls will not measure the effects of killing badgers on incidence of bovine TB.

Speaking to the Sunday Times Mr Paterson suggested that "It will take 20-25 years of hard culling" to achieve the desired results and that, if the trials are deemed to be effective, the government will "definitely be extending them." He said that as many as 40 cull zones could be created over the next four years.

However, opponents of Defra's culling policy continue to express grave misgivings. Culling was postponed in the trial areas in October 2012 due to concerns over badger numbers; fears that farmers in cull companies had drastically underestimated the number of badgers in both cull areas led to a last minute U-turn, and higher population estimates were adopted, but Defra estimates of badger numbers have since been reduced.

Critics at the Badger Trust have said that, as badger numbers are not known for certain, there will be no way of knowing whether shooters have reached the target 70 percent of badgers in a cull zone; if they kill too many, cull companies risk causing 'local exctinctions,' breaking both the terms of their license and the law, kill too few and the conditions of licenses will not have been met either. The Trust's concerns have been backed up by scientists who worked on the previous government's Randomised Badger Culling Trials.     

Based on current estimates, shooters in the two zones must kill between two and three thousand badgers over a six-week period.

Mr Paterson told The Times last week that "an enormous increase in the badger population" has occurred since badgers were given protected status in the UK and that bovine TB incidences have risen alongside this; however, the last official population estimate was made in 1997, as The Times pointed out. The Badger Trust instead claims that the disease began its rapid spread "after the BSE and foot and mouth epidemics during the 2000s, when restocking with untested cattle took place."

Trust Chair David Williams said "Mr Paterson's reported remarks distort history, ignore science and, as the article makes clear; any ‘enormous increase’ in the badger population is only hearsay. The Minister presides over his own department's failures in taking so long to toughen up cattle controls."

Breaking from its parent organisation, the British Veterinary Association, which supports culling, veterinary specialists at the British Veterinary Zoological Society who work with wild and exotic animals challenged the government's cull proposals in March.

Joining a growing number of experts, including the architects of the RBCT, upon which much of Defra's evidence is based, BVZS called on BVA to withdraw its backing of Defra's policy. The society said culling is not supported by scientific evidence and was especially critical of the 'free-shooting' methodology being tested in the trials. Dr Elizabeth Mullineaux of BVZS said in March "The pilot culls are an exercise in seeing if badgers can be shot humanely, effectively and safely. This exercise is not worthwhile by anyone's estimation unless it forms part of a methodology that can reduce TB in cattle… this is simply not the case."

Over 37,000 cattle were killed in 2012 as a result of bovine TB control measures. However, the debate rages on over whether the government's response to the disease will prove effective.