after the relentless slaughter over the past 9 months

Yes, I knew about this but I feel the item from the BBC is somewhat emotive, even though I favour the badgers! I don’t agree with the culling – or killing if we don’t want to mince words – but to call it relentless slaughter is to over-egg the pudding. My concern is what happens after this phase is finished; that it could then degenerate into something worse.

As I understand it, there is a government funded £34 million, 3 year programme targeted to 30 areas to establish if badgers do indeed spread tuberculosis to cattle. The intent of the programme is to kill 10,000 badgers and carry out a post mortem on each, plus any road-kill they can get, to determine whether the animal carries the disease. This needs to be put in the context of a total UK badger population currently around 400,000 and growing, of which about 50,000 a year are killed on the roads (seems a hell of a high proportion, if true, but I think I have commented before that I do see a lot of dead badgers on the road).

Some views:

Sir John Krebs, the scientist who drew up the original plans for the cull, says the killing is vital to find out first of all whether or not badgers are responsible for transmitting TB to cattle, and then whether culling badgers is an effective way of controlling the disease.

Dr Elaine King, from the National Federation of Badger Groups, claims that the experiment is simply too grandiose and too complicated to work, partly because many landowners are refusing to cooperate. The National Trust, the Wildlife Trusts and the RSPCA, for example, are against the culling and have said that they will not allow it to happen on their land. The Federation is actively urging Ministers to spend the £34m instead on cattle vaccine and improving cattle health.

Jeff Rooker, the Food Safety Minister, has said the idea of eradicating the badger species "would not be countenanced" (glad to hear that!!) but added that the problem of TB in cattle was growing. He says that the problem of preventing widespread disease in cattle herds that are used for milk and meat to feed human beings must be tackled now before it becomes unmanageable. (Well, amen to that.)