SEVEN years ago, the UK government set out to answer a seemingly simple question: does culling wild badgers, a protected species thought to be responsible for spreading tuberculosis, prevent the disease spreading to cattle? This week the answer finally arrived. But it was not the simple yes or no answer that most people had hoped for.
In the worst affected regions of the UK, in the south-west of England, bovine TB infects about 10 per cent of the cattle population. Farmers have long blamed badgers for spreading the disease, and a trial was launched in 1998 to find out whether…
