Huw Irranca-Davies MP, Shadow Minister for Food and Farming, responding to reports that the Government plans to bring forward the badger culls to early summer in 2015 in order to cull badger cubs, said;

“If these reports are accurate then it is further evidence that this Tory-led Government has reached new levels of desperation, where the mass culling of juvenile badger cubs is now a substitute for any serious strategy to tackle Bovine TB.

“The Prime Minister and his Defra Secretary are clearly strangers to evidence-based policy, and are pursuing a cull which could worsen the spread of TB in cattle and badgers, and which is bad for taxpayers, wildlife and farmers.”