FARMERS are ready to take the law into their own hands and shoot badgers if the Government rejects a mass cull to help to control bovine tuberculosis in cattle and wildlife.

Meurig Raymond, the deputy president of the National Farmers’ Union, said yesterday that shooting was inevitable if ministers decided against tackling the reservoir of TB in badgers.

He added: “Such action would do more damage than a concerted, managed cull in given areas. There would be the perturbation effect, with badgers just moving into neighbouring territory, spreading the disease.

“But I know they [farmers] will do it. We could not accept it as a union, but these are farmers who are desperate and feel their livelihoods are threatened.”

Mr Raymond spoke out as the consultation over a possible badger cull closed. A decision is expected this month. But there is a gloomy belief in farming circles that the Government will recoil from a cull and cattle will continue to become infected as the disease runs rampant in wildlife.

High-profile advertising campaigns against a cull by the RSPCA, the Badger Trust and other wildlife groups has heightened the despondency among farmers. Ben Bradshaw, the Animal Welfare Minister, has received 25,000 submissions on the subject, most of them believed to be against a cull.

Mr Raymond is in no doubt that the letters are part of an orchestrated campaign from wildlife groups. “I am fairly certain that 25,000 farmers haven’t written in. They expect the union to negotiate for them. But wildlife groups have put together a pro forma letter. Well, if there are 10,000 pro forma letters, I regard that as one letter and I would hope that ministers would recognise that this was a concerted effort by just a handful of people.”

Farmers, however, are nervous about becoming directly involved in any cull, fearing a backlash from animal rights extremists. But they are now so desperate to see the disease controlled that many would be willing to assist. A poll of 1,540 farmers in the South West and the West Midlands, two of the disease hotspots, conducted by the University of Exeter for the NFU and the Country Land and Business Association, indicated that 94 per cent would co-operate with a cull.

The incidence of bovine TB has been growing at a rate of 18 per cent a year.

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