Prof Ranald Munro is the ex-Chair of an independent expert group appointed by the government to assess its badger culling trials. As the announcement is made of another increase in culling he has written to Natural England to say that the policy is causing “huge suffering” as well as being ineffective. The independent expert group found that nearly a quarter of the badgers shot took more than five minutes to die. This is clearly a unacceptable level of cruelty in any civilised country and may be why the publication of the original report was so delayed. Its conclusions were finally revealed after it was passed to BBC news. Shortly thereafter ministers decided to disband the independent expert group. They claimed this was because its work was completed but many of the experts involved disagreed with one suggesting that ministers were ignoring scientific advice.

There is no evidence so far that the culls are reducing TB in cattle. In Gloucestershire, one of the areas where the cull has been going longest the number of new herds with confirmed TB more that doubled in 2018. It is too early to see if this is a trend but it seems to contradict the success messages being pumped out by DEFRA and the NFU.

The full story by the BBC’s excellent Science correspondent Pallab Ghosh can be read here.

There seem to be two basic lines here:

• The cull is a science based, proportionate and effective method of reducing a terrible disease which wrecks farmer’s livelihoods as the government and the NFU suggest.

• The cull is a cruel, expensive and unscientific political sop that has wasted millions of pounds, killed thousands of animals and done nothing to address the incidence of farm breakdowns but rather made them worse as the scientists and conservationists suggest.

At present the evidence is insufficient to be sure but if it does turn out that the scientists were right and the government ministers were wrong what effect will that have on allowing ministers to make controversial decisions on science matters in the future?