SIR - I hope you will grant me an opportunity again to attempt to clarify some facts about badgers and bovine TB. There are roughly 400,000 badgers in the UK.

Badgers live in underground sets with three to 10 badgers in each. They like to make their setts on gentle slopes near wooded farmland. Females give birth to up to three babies each year between February and April. Badgers are very territorial. They like to eat things like maize and earthworms. Badgers defecate and urinate in latrines, a separate area shared by several family groups nearby the sets. With regards to TB, any mammal (including humans) with untreated tuberculosis will slowly suffer under the illness and die. If you need proof, then go to Africa where you can see some fellow humans dying with the disease. There are a high percentage of TB-infected badgers in the southwest (ISGs 4th Report on Cattle TB, 2005). To say badgers do not suffer is blind ignorance.

Before badgers became a protected species in 1973, their numbers were fairly low, as landowners had been culling them with CO gas. Badger TB was nearly eradicated before this using the same test and slaughter regime used today. The main difference today is the much larger badger population infected with bTB. This means badgers are a reservoir host for the disease. It is no longer a blaming game. It's unfortunate but badgers have bTB, spread bTB and suffer with bTB, and their behavior and lifestyle bring them into close contact with our livestock. Any disease maintained in a reservoir wildlife population will become almost impossible to eradicate. The point of a badger cull is not to wipe badgers from the face of the earth. The point is to decrease the disease incidence in badgers (the reservoir) so there will be less interactions between diseased and healthy animals, and thus gain control of the disease.

JESSICA R THORNTON,

BSc, BVetMed, MRCVS

Worcester.