About 200 farmers gathered outside the Houses of Parliament today in protest at the spiralling levels of TB in cattle and the Government’s failure to sanction a badger cull to control the disease.

Two cattle from an Uxbridge farm also joined in the demonstration. They come from an area not affected by bovine TB.

This was a symbolic gesture to show the threat to every cow in the country unless action is taken to deal with the reservoir of the disease in wild life.

Last year some 28,000 cattle were destroyed because they were infected with TB. In the first four months of this year some 13,500 cattle, had been destroyed and by the end of the year farmers’ leaders believe the figure could reach 40,000.

Farmers had placards and large posters depicting three cattle each with a shooting target of their head.

Fears that animal rights activists might attempt the highjack the protest failed to materialise but nevertheless there was a discreet police presence.

Peter Kendall, president of the National Farmers Union was cheered loudly when he rounded on Gordon Brown for lecturing about food waste when the government was responsible for the wasted lives of thousands of cattle and the loss of vital food supplies such as milk and beef.

He announced he had withdrawn all cooperation with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs on plans to introduce cost sharing of future disease outbreaks.

He also pledged that the NFU would launch legal proceedings in the High Court over the Government’s failure to licence farmers to kill badgers for disease control purposes.

He also confirmed the NFU is to refuse to take part in a new government partnership group aimed to devise a TB strategy.

The union will only be represented if the group is independent and takes full jurisdiction for all future decisions on TB.

Mr Kendall addressing farmers before their demonstration said: “We must start the fight back now and our objective is to reverse this decision.

He said the statement made by Hilary Benn, Rural Affairs Secretary, to MPs conceding that a cull of badgers might work “outrageous”.

He said: “If a cull might just work then we should have a go because what we are doing now certainly is not.”

He said that a project put forward by 1,200 landowners in the south west to organise a controlled cull of badgers from Bideford in Devon to the north Cornwall coast had won the backing of all party MPs on the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs select committee.

Yet Mr Benn had ruled it out as impractical without even visiting the area or talking to the farmers involved to find out their plan. ”It’s insulting,” Mr Kendall said.

Mr Benn in a statement to the House of Commons yesterday announced an extra £20million over the next three years to fund the development of vaccines for badgers and cattle.

His decision against a cull has won the backing of all the main animal welfare organisations such as the RSPCA, the Badger’s Trust, the Wildlife Trust and the country’s biggest landowner the National Trust.

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