Badger Trust launches judicial review action over cull plans

The Badger Trust has launched a judicial review action over a Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs decision to proceed with a cull of badgers in England.

Two pilot culls are set to take place in Somerset and Gloucestershire later in 2012. Under the government’s proposals, Natural England will issue licences.

But the trust argued that the proposed cull would “not meet the strict legal test of ‘preventing the spread of disease’ in the areas being licensed, and may in fact amount to a recipe for spreading the disease” (bovine tuberculosis or bTB).

It claimed that DEFRA’s own evidence confirmed that the proposed cull would prompt the spread of disease in and around the cull zones. This is “entirely antithetical” to the aims in the strict test set down in section 10(2)(a) of the Protection of Badgers Act 1992, the trust said.

The Badger Trust also plans to challenge the decision on the grounds that:

• The cost impact assessment underpinning DEFRA’s decision was flawed; and
• Guidance which DEFRA issued to Natural England was invalid. The trust argues that section 15(2) of the Natural Environment and Rural Communities Act 2006 does not give the Secretary of State the power to issue guidance to Natural England on killing badgers.

Gwendolen Morgan of law firm Bindmans, solicitor to the trust, said: “We have identified some serious flaws in the way by which the Secretary of State reached her decision to cull badgers. Given that DEFRA’s proposals come at an enormous cost to farmers, and threaten to prompt rather than prevent the spread of disease, we hope that this ill-conceived decision will be struck down by the court.”

The trust argued that the introduction of stricter cattle measures would beat bTB, claiming that culling could make “no meaningful contribution” to the disease’s eradication.

In 2010 the trust successfully challenged, through judicial review, plans for a cull put forward by the Welsh Assembly Government. The Welsh Assembly Government is reconsidering its position.

A spokeswoman for Defra told the BBC: "Nobody wants to see badgers culled, but no country in the world where wildlife carries TB has successfully controlled the disease in cattle without tackling its presence in wildlife as well. Unless further action is taken now, it will continue to get worse."