Badger Cull: Cases For And Against
Updated: 3:35pm UK, Tuesday 23 October 2012
By Thomas Moore, Health and Science Correspondent
The badger cull has been delayed by a simple counting exercise that went badly wrong.
Just days before the cull was due to start in Gloucestershire and Somerset, fresh research showed there were twice as many badgers living in the areas than previously thought.
That left farmers with an impossible task. They had to cull 70% of badgers within six weeks, or risk badgers spreading bovine tuberculosis to other areas.
But badgers tend to stay underground over winter, further reducing the time they had to complete the cull.
So it will now be the spring, at the earliest, before a cull will start.
The Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) says it is still committed to a cull.
Last year 34,000 cattle had to be slaughtered after developing TB. Compensation for farmers and other costs totalled £150m.
Ministers - and most farmers - say measures to control cattle-to-cattle transmission cannot stop the spread of the disease on their own. Controlling TB in the badger population needs to be done at the same time.
Independent research shows that by trapping, and then shooting, badgers in a defined area the number of cattle herds affected by TB could be reduced by 16% over nine years.
Defra now wants to pilot the cull in two areas before rolling it out nationwide. But to save money it will allow licensed farmers to shoot badgers out in the open, without trapping them in cages first.
However scientists have warned that shooting free-running badgers could undermine the benefits of a cull.
It could lead to more animals fleeing - and if they are carrying TB there is a risk more cattle outside the culling zone will be infected.
So it could make the tuberculosis problem worse, not better.
The economics of the cull have also been questioned. One scientist calculated that a cull over a 50sq km area would cost £1.5m - much of it allocated to policing protesters.
But the cull would only save £972,000 in compensation to farmers for infected cattle.
So while Defra has insisted the cull is a "science-led" policy, the majority of scientists believe it has been a political decision.
In Wales, the government studied the same scientific evidence before deciding to vaccinate badgers, rather than kill them.
In England, Defra says vaccination is expensive and may not control the disease because the vaccine is ineffective if the animal is already infected.
But the growing public opposition to the cull, led by Queen guitarist Brian May, left the Government position looking precarious.
More than 150,000 people signed a petition against the policy, forcing a debate in the House of Commons later this week. And the Badger Trust is mounting a legal challenge.
This could all lead to the Government abandoning the cull next year. That would be an embarrassing U-turn for the Government, which had to back down over plans to sell-off off woodlands following a similar public uprising.
Taking on one of Britain's best loved wild mammals was never going to be easy.
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