DEFRA plans to give farmers licences to cull badgers

DEFRA is planning to give farmers licences to cull or vaccinate badgers in those parts of England worst affected by bovine TB.

Legal challenges are expected from the Badger Trust and other animal welfare groups, after the trust successfully delayed the introduction of a badger cull in west Wales.

Under the plans, licences would be issued under the Protection of Badgers Act 1992 to enable farmers and landowners to cull badgers at their own expense.

A spokesman for the department said: 'Licences would be subject to strict criteria to ensure that the badger control measures are carried out effectively, humanely, and with high regard to animal welfare.

'This will include a requirement that any culling must take place over a minimum area of 150km2 so we can be confident it will have a net beneficial effect. This means that we would expect to receive licence applications from groups of farmers and landowners rather than individuals.'

The spokesman said that licences would not permit the gassing or snaring of badgers, as there was not enough evidence that these methods were humane, but only cage-trapping and shooting.

'Badger culling has the potential to reduce bovine TB in cattle by rapidly reducing the overall number of infected badgers, thus reducing the rate of transmission of the disease to cattle,' the spokesman said.

'No other country in the world with a similar reservoir of bovine TB in wildlife has eradicated TB from cattle without stringent wildlife control measures.'

Peter Kendall, president of the NFU, said the disease not only had a huge impact on farming businesses through movement restrictions and the slaughter of cattle, but an 'enormous emotional impact' on farming families.

'Currently we test and cull the cattle that react to the TB test, but we do nothing to control the disease in badgers, the major source of TB in the countryside, so we end up in a vicious cycle of testing and slaughtering our cattle, then more cattle become infected from the reservoir of disease in badgers, so we test and kill even more cows from the herd,' he said. 'This has to stop.'