The NFBG contacted the paper's correspondence author, statistician Dr David Williams, to establish why the researchers had concluded that culling was "feasible" but "not viable".  He said, "It would be technically possible to try and do it if it were legal or desirable or moral.  But it's neither legal nor morally justified, or anything like that, especially when there are alternatives."

The trial involved exterminating 2,360 badgers across 1,214 square kilometres in Cork, Donegal, Kilkenny and Monaghan between 1997 and 2002.  This is similar to the "proactive" badger culling strategy currently being implemented in the so-called Krebs' experiment in Britain, but badgers have been virtually eradicated from the study areas in Ireland.

TB in cattle from these "removal" areas was compared to TB in cattle from "reference" areas - a weakened equivalent of a scientific control.  The researchers report that the chance of a herd of cattle not having a TB outbreak for the next five years was between "seven per cent (Donegal) and 24 per cent (Kilkenny) higher in removal over reference areas."

Dr King continued, "This paper fails to answer the key question that every cattle farmer in Britain will be asking - what was the reduction in bovine TB? Eighteen months ago, the Irish researchers told BBC Radio 4 that badger culling reduced TB in cattle by an average of 80 per cent. That claim is simply not supported by this paper. In fact, it's impossible to determine the actual reduction in TB that has been achieved in Ireland by badger culling.

"We have been advised that the Republic of Ireland has slaughtered more than half its badgers over the last ten years, reducing the population to less than 100,000 badgers. Badger densities are significantly lower in Ireland compared to Britain.  Yet in 2002, the last year for which data are available, 6.5 per cent of Irish cattle herds were under TB restriction. In Britain, which has three times more badgers than Ireland, 3.6 per cent of herds are under movement restriction at the end of November 2004."

It is also worth noting that in Kilkenny, one of the Four Areas study counties, the number of herds under restriction was 9.1 per cent - almost three times higher than the average figure in Britain. Of the four counties, Donegal had the lowest incidence of bovine TB. This county also has the lowest stocking densities and smallest herds. It is widely agreed that higher stocking densities and larger herds increase the persistence of bovine TB in cattle..

"Ireland's futile badger slaughter has simply confirmed that badger culling will never be a solution to the problem of bovine TB. This makes it vital that DEFRA focuses all its energies on controlling the movement of infected livestock and removing all infected cattle by implementing the more accurate gamma interferon TB test", concluded Dr King.

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