On Tuesday I asked the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine the reason he is pursuing a badger cull when guarantees have been given about rolling out a vaccination programme for badgers infected with TB; the reason his Department is tendering for the provision of 25,000 units of biological material, which are essentially body bags for badgers.

He said “targeted badger removals will continue” until “a viable oral delivery method can be put in place” which was a most unfortunate answer because in the context of a badger cull we are talking about a most inhumane, cruel and barbaric way of dealing with bovine TB, when first, it has not been fully proven that the badger is totally responsible for the disease, and there are doubts over some of the experiments that initially proved that was the case. Second, a reduction in TB in cattle can also be linked to improved husbandry and other factors, not especially through the badger cull.

A badger cull is a particularly cruel way to deal with the problem. Illegal ways are in use to kill badgers. Such horrible practices, include putting slurry in badger setts, and throwing badger carcases onto the road to give the impression they have been killed in road accidents. That is what is happening to a badger population that we do not know is 100% responsible for bovine TB.

I also asked the Minister to explain the urgency to kill thousands of an ecologically important species, namely, the badger? Recent reports have shown that injecting badgers significantly reduces the progress and severity of TB. Unlike culling, vaccination does not disrupt the badger’s social group and it provides immunity indirectly to unvaccinated badger cubs.

Overall I am happy that the Minister made a guarantee that in the long term vaccination programs for badgers are the preferred option over the current practice of culling. There as still major concerns which I felt were not answered, such as the findings of various conservative agencies reports that the tests which cite badgers as the main cause of the spread of bovine TB amongst cattle is at the very least flawed. I still feel that the findings of these agencies should not be ignored and I will keep campaigning for the culling of these ecologically significant creatures to stop with immediate effect