A badger cull to reduce TB in cattle could go on for 25 years and eventually include "routine" shooting by farmers, Environment Secretary Owen Paterson has warned, ahead of two pilot schemes due to start this week.
As many as 40 cull zones are planned if the trials in Somerset and Gloucestershire – starting next Sunday with a target of killing 5,000 badgers – are deemed a success.
Estimates suggest the long-term project could see the slaughter of up to 100,000 badgers, a prospect that will infuriate animal rights and conservation groups opposing the trials
Mr Paterson has this week predicted a long-term project lasting up to 25 years with changes in the law. Farmers in the South West, however, believe a four-year project will be enough to return badger populations to a "sustainable level" and say the introduction of zones will be gradual – perhaps ten each year.
Bill Harper, a Devon farmer and chairman of the National Beef Association's TB group, said the disease was now "swirling" around hotspots, particularly in the region. He said he hoped that as areas were "cleansed" people would begin to see the necessity of the method.
"It is a disease of overcrowding and poor conditions and this is about getting to a population density that can live healthily," he added.
"It is a hard nettle to grasp, but unless we take action the consequences are quite alarming – a disease like TB knows no bounds and will not just die out."
Some 26,000 infected cattle were slaughtered in England in 2011, at a cost to the taxpayer of £100 million. Figures released by the Government this month showed the disease death toll at the same level as 2012 – one of the worst years in recent history – with a 30 per cent rise in the number of herds infected.
Mr Paterson said he wanted to reduce the incidence of bovine TB to less than 0.2 per cent of herds a year, a target he expected would take 20 to 25 years of "hard culling". He said getting rid of bovine TB would mean giving farmers the freedom to shoot badgers, a protected species, as freely as they can now shoot foxes, rabbits and other vermin.
Conservationists and welfare campaigners argue that there is no compelling evidence showing badgers are a key cause, nor that culling them would halt it.
