Despite Ban, UK Has Been Holding Secret Badger-Gassing Trials

<p>Flickr: Larry Lamsa</p>
<p>Flickr: Larry Lamsa</p>

According to new documents released under a freedom of information request, the UK's government has been conducting secret trials to test the feasibility of gassing badger setts -- the animals' dens and the tunnels that connect them -- since the summer of 2013, despite a ban on the use of lethal gases to cull the animals that has been in effect since the 1980s. As the Guardian reports, the trials come in the wake of a hugely unsuccessful farmer-led shooting cull, meant to curb both badger populations and the spread of tuberculosis amongst livestock:

The tests, at an undisclosed location, are examining how the poisons carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxide flow through complex badger setts. No animals or active badger setts have so far been involved in the tests, which are ongoing and have no end date. ...

Gassing badgers with cyanide was outlawed in England as inhumane in 1982, but some farmers have called for gassing to return, as did Princess Anne in April. There have also been suggestions that some illegal gassing using vehicle exhausts already takes place.

In 2005, the UK's Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) determined that gassing "cannot be reliably expected to kill all the animals in a complex burrow system," but, in October, UK Environment Secretary Owen Paterson announced that gassing was being reconsidered anyway. Additionally, after studies found the cull to be ineffective earlier this year, Paterson said it would continue anyway. Animal welfare advocates are outraged over both the decision and the unveiling of the secret tests.

"Gassing has already been shown by research to not be humane," said veterinarian Mark Jones, executive director of Humane Society International/UK. "We need DEFRA to come clean on why it is spending that public money on research into badger culling methods which have already been shown to be indiscriminate, inhumane and ineffective, and are in any event prohibited under international agreements."

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