The news that pilot badger culls will go ahead in areas of Gloucestershire and Somerset has been greeted with mixed responses. Whilst some countryside groups, including the NFU and CLA have welcomed the news, claiming culling is necessary to alleviate bovine TB, others, including wildlife charities and the RSPCA have condemned the move, which they claim will be cruel and ineffectual.

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However, other groups including the Badger Trust, which successfully put an end to cull plans in Wales in 2010, have challenged the government’s assertions regarding the effect killing badgers will have and the methods Defra proposes to use.

Although the Trust acknowledged yesterday that it would not be able to pursue a legal challenge until after the pilot culls go ahead, due to a lack of information on which it could base a lawsuit, a spokesperson assured that the Trust would be scrutinising Defra’s accounts of the trial culls and said that it is already considering options with its legal advisers.

The Badger Trust today questioned the government’s claims that its cull will be “science-led”, purporting that the forthcoming trials are “rigged”. The Trust pointed out that, as the locations which have been selected by Defra were chosen to provide “the most suitable to pilot controlled shooting of badgers”, the trials would not yield results representative of the method’s efficacy were it to be rolled out.

In a statement made yesterday, the Trust also claimed that the government has not provided satisfactory information on how its trials will be independently monitored to ensure they are humane.

Speaking earlier in the week, Philip Hosking, president of the Small Farms Association, expressed his doubts over whether the expense, conflict and strife to achieve a 16 per cent drop in bTB breakdowns over nine years would be “worth the effort”. He questioned, “If all goes to plan, if your herd had six TB reactors last year, you’re on track to have only five reactors in 2020. Worth the money and risk?”

Mr Hosking said, “My worry is that very little is set in stone, even after the contract is signed” and warned that farmers could not guarantee that they would be signing up for a four year commitment, as Defra has shifted the goalposts so that farmers will now commit to a “minimum of four years”. Furthermore, he pointed out that there is no guarantee the costs would remain the same; should shooting badgers in the open prove to be ineffectual, farmers locked into contracts could be asked to trap and shoot badgers instead, at eight times the expense of a free-shoot.

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