Badger cull expansion is abandoned

The government has abandoned its planned expansion of badger culling to reduce TB in cattle, according to a BBC report.

“The environment department’s original plan was to announce up to 10 new cull areas in South West England each year,” the report states.

Defra’s own independent assessment shows that culls in two pilot areas were not effective, and raised questions about their humaneness.

But it wasn’t all good news: “These pilot culls will continue, though there will be no independent oversight to assess their future performance".

In a Commons statement, the Environment Secretary Owen Paterson proposed a programme of vaccination around the edges of the most badly affected parts of the country. “This”, he said, “would create a buffer zone of immunity that would stop the disease from spreading.”

Wasn’t that what the experts wanted in the first place?