Badger Trust launches legal challenge
The Badger Trust has launched a legal challenge to the decision by the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) to sanction a pilot program to cull badgers in areas of West Gloucestershire and West Somerset with the aim of investigating if the practice reduces the spread of Bovine Tuberculosis (bTB) in a meaningful and humane manner.
The Trust has asked the High Court to overturn DEFRA's decision on three grounds. They allege that the effects of the culls would not meet the legal test of ‘preventing the spread of disease’, that the cost impact assessment is inaccurate, and that culling is not sanctioned under Natural England's mandate. Commenting, Vice Chairman of the Badger Trust Pat Hayden said “Badger Trust will exhaust all peaceful, legal avenues of challenge to prevent this wrong-headed cull from going ahead.”
Farming Minister Jim Paice MP has previously stated that the Government expected a legal challenge and prepared the policy accordingly. A DEFRA spokesman declined to comment on the legal case. However, he did say that “Nobody wants to see badgers culled, but no country in the world where wildlife carries TB has successfully controlled the disease in cattle without tackling its presence in wildlife as well. Unless further action is taken now it will continue to get worse.”
Defra has published guidance for the vet sector ahead of a proposed UK-EU Sanitary and Phytosanitary agreement.
