If there is a badger version of Michael Winner, he could do worse than make a reservation at Jilly Cooper’s kitchen window. Ordinary badgers get by on a diet of earthworms and grubs, but the Manoir aux Quat’ Saisons of the badger world offers diners an extensive menu that includes left-over shepherd’s pie, fish pie, rice and chicken - with only a labrador dog to compete for the spoils.

“We have about 30 setts at the top of our wood,” the novelist says at her home in the Cotswolds. “The badgers just come up to the window and they seem perfectly harmless and sweet.”

Harmless and sweet they may be, but Cooper now fears for the future of her nightly visitors. Suddenly the fate of entire badger populations hangs in the balance.

The trouble can be traced back to a single animal, infected with bovine tuberculosis and found dead on a Gloucestershire farm in 1971. It was this discovery that prompted scientists to wonder whether badgers might be spreading TB to cattle.

Not that bovine TB was much of a problem back then. Yet now it’s spreading at an alarming rate: more than 28,000 cattle were slaughtered last year after testing positive for the disease, and figures show that cases are doubling every 4½ years.

In a desperate attempt to stop the disease spreading, the Welsh assembly announced plans last week for a cull of badgers. Full details have yet to be revealed but Hilary Benn, the environment secretary, is considering a similar move in the worst-affected areas of England – the southwest, Staffordshire and Derbyshire.

Whatever decision he makes, it will be furiously contested. Pitchforks are already being sharpened in the countryside for what could be the most bitter and damaging political dispute since fox-hunting.

On one side are most farmers. They are supported by the National Farmers’ Union, the Welsh assembly’s chief vet and Sir David King, former chief scientist in Whitehall. Lining up against them, and ready to fight to the last sett, are the Badger Trust, the RSPCA and celebrity animal lovers including Cooper, Alan Titchmarsh and Sir David Attenborough. Both sides claim the support of science.

Some say badgers are being unfairly blamed. “Of 11,000 badgers killed in a scientific trial, only 1,515 had TB,” Cooper says. “The cattle are giving it to the badgers – that’s what everybody believes.”

At least three inquiries and reviews have examined the issue over the past 12 years. Each point they have raised seems to be hotly contested. Even the experts cannot agree.

Professor John Bourne led the most extensive inquiry, the Independent Scientific Group on Cattle TB. His team conducted culling trials over a decade, and their verdict was damning. “We conclude that badger-culling cannot meaningfully contribute to the future control of cattle TB in Britain,” said the ISG report, published last year. In fact, Bourne says, small-scale culls would probably make the problem worse.

Shortly after that report was published, King reviewed the research and came to a different conclusion. He said a cull would be successful if carried out over a large area (more than 115 square miles) with “hard” boundaries – the sea or a large river, for example – and by competent officials.

For Stephen James, a farmer, a cull cannot come soon enough. He’s been fighting TB on his farm near Clynderwen, Carmarthenshire, on and off for nearly 15 years. To fight the latest bout of infection, restrictions on cattle movements have been in force at the farm for the past 17 months.

“We tested about 400 animals in March and we’ve got just one that’s tested positive,” he says. “It’s very frustrating, but you learn to live with these things.” He lost 37 cattle last year, and the restrictions mean he must feed and house 110 beef cattle he would normally have sold as calves.

By trapping badgers in cages before humanely destroying them the ISG trials were using the wrong culling method, James believes. “If a wild animal is trapped, it’s going to be disturbed,” he says.

“Its colleagues are going to realise and move on.

And the animals that moved on were carrying the disease.”

He suggests a legal form of snaring the animals and then shooting them, as in Ireland, where the culling was successful (though opponents say that British conditions are very different).

Some badger groups blame intensive farming methods for the spread of the disease but James dismisses this idea. “You can speak to plenty of organic farmers who have the same trouble,” he says.

As Benn stares forlornly at his in-tray and perhaps hopes for a quick cabinet reshuffle, here is an unhappy thought. “Whoever makes the decision about badger culling hasn’t got a great future in politics, basically,” James says. “If you’re the one that suggests culling wildlife, the chances of your getting further in the political field might be challenged.”

As if that weren’t bad enough, some scientists believe that a successful cull of badgers will probably bring about a sharp rise in fox numbers. And that might just reopen the bitter debate over hunting.

Good luck, minister.

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