The Department of Agriculture and Food said last night it will be examining reports that the British authorities have suspended the killing of badgers to prevent the spread of bovine TB because results had indicated culling increased the disease in cattle rather than reducing it.
The British announcement brought an urgent appeal by the Irish Council Against Blood Sports and the Irish Wildlife Trust to the Minister for Agriculture and Food, Mr Walsh, to immediately follow the British example and suspend all similar culling here.
The Department has plans to cull 30 per cent of Irish badgers in TB blackspot areas and had planned to take on 75 operatives to carry out the cull. Nearly 50,000 badgers have already been killed in selected areas where a drop in the number of cattle failing the TB test has occurred.
But last night Ms Aideen Yourell, an ICABS spokeswoman, said the Minister must look at the British data which led to the suspension of the badger cull there because it showed a 22 per cent increase in bovine TB where badgers were culled.
"We therefore call on Minister Joe Walsh to suspend all culling of badgers carried out here. His Department's flawed programme of taking out 30 per cent of Irish badgers in a given area is based on supposition and vague estimations," she said.
"For years the Department of Agriculture has been culling badgers, using a barbaric and cruel wire snare, which they euphemistically term 'a specially devised stopped body restraint' in which the stricken animals can be literally strangulated, dying horribly," she added.
"We also call on Minister Martin Cullen to immediately intervene in this issue and refuse to issue licences for the snaring of badgers."
The Irish Wildlife Trust also called on the Department of Agriculture to heed the lessons learned in the UK and to suspend all further culls.
"The IWT feels that the resources currently devoted to the present badger culls are being misspent and should be directed toward the implementation of a ban on cattle movement," its statement read.
The British Animal Health and Welfare Minister, Mr Ben Bradshaw, announced the suspension of reactive culling in the so-called Krebs experiment because it increased the disease in cattle, rather than reducing it. The experiment began in 1998 to test whether culling badgers reduced bovine TB but concluded that it increased the disease by 27 per cent.