THIS year’s round of the various badger culls and vaccination trials ended c. two weeks ago, so the great Alice in Wonderland ‘scientific’ debate on the outcome is emerging.

Perhaps most strikingly DARDNI, the Department of Agriculture in Ulster has concluded that the second year of the ‘TVR’, Test, Vaccinate, Remove Trial brings the total badgers TVRd to 580, but have ruled out any rolling out of this scheme as too labour intensive hence costly: c. £5,172 per badger!

So continuing to 2018 might shed important new light on the badger/TB problem.

Dr Glossop recently revealed that the 288 sq km “IAA”, Intensive Action Area badger vaccine trial has had no demonstrable effect on cattle TB although a return to annual testing has halved it since the 2008 peak (12,000 down to 6,000 reactors).

Towards £1 million/1,300 badgers yearly boils down to around £769 each, so is it really worth completing a fifth final trial year to nil effect?

Meantime the English three pilots, including Dorset this year, achieved their target cull of around 1,700 badgers within six weeks mainly by moving the goalposts in reducing the number aimed at.

The Glos/Somerset cull of 2,476 badgers in two years will have made nil difference to cattle TB, only around seven might have had infectious TB, so posed a risk to other badgers or cattle.

So, even if theoretically seven breakdowns might have been avoided, at a cost of c. £30,000 each, that is £210,000.

The culls cost £16.7 million, including some £3 million for extra policing, so £6,775/badger which can hardly be deemed cost-effective.

Liz Truss is already promising three more areas next year Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, even though they’re wildly uneconomic.

The lunatics are running the asylum!

Meantime DEFRAs consultation on tightening cattle controls ended last Friday, October 23, and they have accidentally discovered that badgers are not the main cause of the spread of TB after all.

Breakdowns supposedly “due to badgers” have been caused by early cattle TB reactor cases without visible lung lesions, which nevertheless do have TB.

So the whole “BEVS” Badger Edge Vaccination Scheme is pure nonsense.

There are no armies of badgers emigrating into edge/low risk areas, merely local cattle movements.

Sad that Sussex managed to vaccinate 35 this year, out of a population of several thousand, how on earth can anyone imagine that will do the slightest good?

The Killerton Estate had six herd breakdowns in 2014, so vaccinating 569 badgers in 20 sq km did no good there either.

Martin Hancox

Stroud