Badger culls: government statistics dismissed as ‘barefaced lies’

Experts challenge claim that strategy is cutting spread of tuberculosis in cattle

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Leading vets and animal rights campaigners have accused the Government of telling “barefaced lies” about the success of its controversial badger culls in England.

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) published data in September indicating that cases of bovine tuberculosis (TB) in Somerset and Gloucestershire had halved since pilot culls began there in 2013. But the Prion Interest Group claims that the Government has issued “unclear and deliberately opaque” figures on the effectiveness of the strategy, the BBC reports.

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