Badgered to death

“Dear old Badger,” gushes Ratty at the beginning of The Wind in the Willows, “nobody interferes with him...They’d better not”. If only, this were true. Although he is still a protected species, anxiety about bovine tuberculosis has led to Badger being on the receiving end of the kind of tough love he traditionally meted out to weasels.

Badgers have been suspected of being cattle infectors since the 1970s. To put it to the test, the Ministry of Agriculture (MAFF) is engaged in a programme of experimental culling that, it is estimated, will cost £34 million over seven years, with no interim results meanwhile. Ten zones have been established, each 300 kilometres square and divided into thirds — the first for surveying, the second for reactive culling around infected areas and the third for the pro-active killing of all badgers.

The trial was supposed to take five years and produce a proper basis for further action. Instead it has dragged on, beset by irritants such as farmers shooting badgers in no-kill zones, landowners refusing their support, and people going a-wrecking — not just activists, but local dog-walkers upset by the systematic carnage.

MAFF’s mixture of laggardly science and heavy-handed investigation has attracted criticism from all sides, as we report in T2 today. Farmers are incensed at the lack of urgency. The incidence of infected cattle is still increasing, with 30,000 infected animals destroyed over the last four years. In Gloucestershire a tenth of the herds are under movement restrictions. Devon has suffered a 100 per cent increase in TB over three years. Combating TB leads to the widespread slaughter of herds that represents not merely a loss of income but the obliteration of a lifetime’s work.

Opponents of the cull argue that it is a gratuitous reaction to a theory based on little more than geographical coincidence. They resent the scale of the operation and suggest that there are options not being explored, including improvements in farm hygiene and animal welfare, control of cattle movement, and devoting more money to researching a vaccine. In addition, they question the degree to which culling will produce the evidence required.

The jury may still be out on the badger’s role in spreading TB, but misgivings about the test are certainly convincing. The scale, length and cost of the Government’s programme makes it less an experiment than a futile attempt to placate farmers by way of gesture culling. Exterminating badgers may placate angry farmers, but a brisk, measured, proportionate trial would be far preferable.

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• http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,56-71579,00.html