The Government plans to license farmers to shoot badgers on sight despite being advised by officials and scientists that this method of culling could be inhumane and counterproductive.
Ministers are expected to authorise the “free shooting” of badgers because it is ten times cheaper than catching them in cages and then shooting them. More than 5,000 badgers a year will be killed under a government plan, expected to be announced within days, to reduce the risk of them infecting cattle with tuberculosis.
The Times has learnt that officials at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) have told ministers that there is a risk that shooting badgers as they emerge from their setts would result in animals being wounded and going back underground to die slowly.
Scientific experts also told ministers that free shooting could reduce or even eliminate the benefits of culling by causing infected badgers to flee, so spreading TB to other farms. But Jim Paice, the Farming Minister, who has a small herd of cattle, favours free shooting because it costs only £200 per square kilometre, compared with £2,500 for cage trapping.
Lord Krebs, who helped to establish a decade-long trial of badger culling and was invited by Defra in April to review the outcome, said that the Government would be betraying its commitment to abide by the science if it authorised free shooting. He said that the trial had involved only cage trapping and there was no evidence on how effective free shooting would be.
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He told The Times: “Defra said that they wanted the policy on badger control to be science-led, so it would be a contradiction to adopt a policy that has no science to back it up. We don’t know whether there are going to be injured badgers limping miserably around and going to die slowly in their setts. We also don’t know the risk to humans [from free shooting].”
The RSPCA said that it opposed a cull but if the Government was determined to have one it should be done in the most humane way. A spokesman said: “Because of their anatomy it is potentially more difficult to free-shoot a badger in a quick, humane way than, say, a fox or a deer. This means there is a high probability that you will be left with a wounded animal.”
The National Farmers’ Union said that it expected those licensed to carry out the cull to undergo marksmanship tests. It said that the licence would also specify a powerful rifle to maximise the chances of getting a clean kill.