The culling of badgers by Department of Agriculture and Food operatives in areas where there is a high incidence of bovine TB will continue at least until the new year, it emerged yesterday.
There had been pleas to the Department to halt its experiments on badger-culling following the decision by the British authorities to end at least one of its major experiments in badger-culling on the grounds that TB in cattle increased by 27 per cent in a study area where all the badgers had been killed.
A Department of Agriculture and Food spokesman in Dublin said an elaborate study had been set up, hiring 75 operatives to cull badgers to determine their role in the spread of the disease to cattle and that would continue until the new year when the research would be reviewed.
The spokesman said the number of cattle that had failed the bovine TB test in Northern Ireland had risen to 16,000 in a herd which was much smaller than that in the Republic. Here the number of so called "reactor" animals had dropped to 28,000 in a national herd of over seven million animals.