The badger is a protected species in law – it is illegal to kill badgers or damage their setts.

Across Northern Ireland there will be working farms with badgers on them and no sign of TB in the farm livestock – so quite simply – badgers are not the cause of TB in cattle.

There is therefore no justification for an indiscriminate cull of badgers in Northern Ireland. If a wildlife intervention is required, then it should be part of a wider farm bio security initiative and be focused on trapping and vaccinating the badgers. Badgers only live for 3-5 years so vaccination would quickly break the population transmission cycle. This would be a much more progressive, humane and effective approach.

The USPCA recognises the trauma and suffering caused at a basic human level on farms affected by bovine TB not to mention the cost – £40m per year spent in tackling the disease and so we need to come up with a new  but more importantly – an effective strategy to eradicate the disease.