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Losing streak: more than 12,000 badgers will be killed to find out if they spread tuberculosis.

Conservation and animal welfare groups have launched a campaign to stop a £17.5 million (US$30 million) government-sponsored scientific experiment that will cull at least 12,500 badgers over five years.

The experiment, announced last week, is designed to investigate the belief, widely held among farmers, that badgers with tuberculosis (TB) pass the disease on to cattle. It will be phased in over the next two years.

The National Federation of Badger Groups (NFBG) says the experiment is “morally unacceptable and practically unworkable”. The Edinburgh-based group Advocates for Animals takes a similar view.

Elaine King, conservation officer at the NFBG, claims the experiment could lead to the “total eradication of badgers” in the areas where culling is to take place.

“The government has clearly underestimated the strength of public feeling on this issue,” warns King. “While the federation does not condone activities that are unlawful, it is inevitable that members of the public will demonstrate and take direct action.”

However, the National Farmers' Union called the experiment “an important step”, which will provide hope to farming families “that bovine tuberculosis is on the way to being solved”.

Bovine tuberculosis is a relatively small problem in British dairy farming, but it is growing steadily. More than 500 cattle died from tuberculosis last year, compared with 125 in 1991. Infected badgers are widely thought to spread the disease through their use of cattle pastures. However, the suspected link has not been confirmed, and there is no diagnostic test available to detect tuberculosis in living badgers.

The culling experiment is among a package of measures proposed to the government by an expert group of scientists chaired by John Krebs, chief executive of the Natural Environment Research Council.

The government has also agreed to invest in developing a vaccine to protect cattle from tuberculosis, though this will take between 10 and 15 years.

Meanwhile, the experiment will take place in 30 trial sites, each occupying 100 square kilometres in different parts of England where the incidence of cattle tuberculosis has historically been high. Badgers will be lured into traps and then shot. The experiment was designed and will be analysed by a separate group of scientists chaired by John Bourne, professor of animal health at the University of Bristol.

Ten sites will have as many badgers removed as possible. In another 10, only badgers from social groups associated with tuberculosis will be removed. No badgers will be removed from the final 10 sites. On each site, researchers will monitor levels of cattle tuberculosis to see whether, and how much, these are affected by the cull. Laboratory studies will quantify the numbers of dead badgers with tuberculosis.

Jeff Rooker, the government's food safety minister, says the decision to kill badgers was a difficult but necessary one. Bovine TB, he said, needed to be better understood, given the implications for humans who eat meat and drink milk.

But Rooker added that the government had incorporated animal welfare concerns into the experiment. As a results of talks with badger groups, he said, the badgers would be caught in traps instead of snares, which are more efficient but considered to be crueller.

There would also be a closed season between February and April each year to reduce the risk of trapping nursing mothers, ensuring that dependent cubs are not left to starve underground. In addition, farmers would be banned from killing badgers outside the trial areas, which cover less than 0.1 per cent of the area of Great Britain.

But according to the NFBG, these measures do not go far enough. One particular concern, according to King, is the risk of the experiment breaking down through continued — though now illegal — badger culling by farmers. She says many wildlife trusts are likely to refuse culling on their land.

Stephen Harris, professor of environmental sciences at the University of Bristol, who works on badger and bovine tuberculosis, is another critic. He questions the data's end use. Large-scale badger culling would not be a long-term solution even if the experiment confirmed a link between badger tuberculosis and the bovine disease, he claims. And, says Harris, the possibility of tuberculosis passing from cows to badgers also needs to be investigated.