A senior government adviser has described coalition plans to change the way the pilot badger culls are assessed as "an abuse" of the scientific method.
Prof Timothy Coulson is concerned the government is considering a less reliable way of assessing humaneness in the cull and numbers of badgers killed.
He is also concerned that it will scrap independent oversight.
It would also make it impossible to assess whether recommendations to improve the cull have worked.
Writing in Animal Ecology in Focus, Prof Coulson says that ministers must be "wilfully" ignoring the concerns of its own scientists.
"I am tempted to speculate that the government no longer wants to know whether the pilots are effective or humane," he says in his article. "They just want to cull badgers, regardless of whether the population or humaneness consequences can be assessed."
No comments:
Post a Comment
You only need to enter your comment once! Comments will appear once they have been moderated. This is so as to stop the would-be comedian who has been spamming the comments here with inane and often offensive remarks. You know who you are!