Badger Cull Ruling

Brian May's Save Me organisation has launched a High Court action demanding an immediate halt to the badger cull.

Represented by leading Human Rights QC, John Cooper and Solicitor David Wells of Wells Burcombe Solicitors, Save Me has filed an ‘exceptionally urgent’ High Court Judicial Review Claim calling for an immediate halt to the culling presently operating under extended licence in Gloucestershire.

The Save Me claim names Secretary of State For Environment Food and Rural Affairs, DEFRA, and Natural England as defendants.

Other Interested Parties are named as the National Farmers Union and the Badger Trust.

In a statement Save Me says

"The call for an urgent review is based on the reasoning that with the Gloucestershire extension already operative, unless this is urgently addressed the period of the extension might elapse before a formal review can be applied."

Brian May has been speaking to The Westcountry Tonight about why he is supporting The Badger Trust's continued legal fight, to stop the Government's planned badger cull.

The Queen guitarist was attending a meeting of The Badger Trust at Taunton's Brewhouse Theatre. He claims badgers are already being deliberately shot, poisoned or gassed, then dumped on roads in the Westcountry to look like roadkill.

The Badger Trust has lost its High Court bid to stop the cull of thousands of badgers in West Gloucestershire and West Somerset.

At a hearing last month, the Trust accused the livestock industry of using badgers as a scapegoat, and underestimating the risk of cattle-to-cattle transmission of bovine TB. Today it was ruled that the legal challenge failed on all grounds.

The two proposed culling trials are scheduled to begin later this summer. Dr Gordon McGlone is from the Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust. He isn't happy with the decision.

The Badger Trust has lost its High Court bid to block a cull of thousands of badgers to tackle tuberculosis in cattle.

The Trust argued Government proposals for two pilot culls were "very, very controversial" at both animal welfare and scientific levels and should be stopped.

But today Mr Justice Ouseley, sitting in London, ruled the legal challenge had failed on all grounds and refused to quash a Government decision last December to allow the culls by farmers and landowners to go ahead.

At a hearing last month, the Trust accused the livestock industry of using badgers as a scapegoat and underestimating the risk of cattle-to-cattle transmission of bovine tuberculosis (bTB).

A decision will made today at the Royal Courts of Justice on two proposed badger culling trials in Gloucestershire and Somerset.

The Badger Trust challenged DEFRA on the trials which are due to start later this summer. The culls are being proposed as a method of stopping the spread of TB.