London, Sep 18 (IANS) Britain will cull thousands of badgers to stop the spread of tuberculosis in cattle, a media report said.
According to the Daily Express, the government has granted the licence to shoot badgers, after bovine TB that can be passed by badgers to cows led 26,000 cattle to be slaughtered last year at a cost of 91 million pounds.
It is also spread between cattle and from cattle to badgers.
Pilot culls are going ahead despite a five-year, 50-million-pound study that said “no practicable method of badger culling can reduce the incidence of cattle TB to any meaningful extent”.
In 2011, government scientists admitted that a cull was only likely to reduce bovine TB by 16 percent.
Natural England, a non-departmental public body of the government responsible for ensuring the natural environment, has issued the first licence for a badger cull in a bovine TB hotspot near West Gloucestershire.
But conservationists have slammed the decision, saying culling was not a viable scientific option.
