Government’s badger cull plan ‘deeply flawed’, damning report warns

Exclusive: Study sent to MPs accuses the Animal and Plant Health Agency of reverting to 1980s “old thinking”

Government experts have based the UK’s badger cull on a “confused and flawed” interpretation of the science, a damning report sent to MPs has concluded.

Calling for an immediate rethink of the policy, the study claims officials adopted an “ineffective and misguided approach” to tackling tuberculosis in dairy cows, leading to a policy that is “a self-perpetuating failure”.

But the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has hit back, saying the report authors are not independent, and claiming that they themselves are not applying the science correctly.