A badger cull intended to control bovine tuberculosis (bTB) outbreaks has not worked and should be ended, a study has suggested.

The decade-long plan that started in Gloucestershire and Somerset, has killed 140,000 badgers.

A paper released today by the Veterinary Record journal and scientists who oppose the cull, claims it “cost a fortune and saved nothing”.

The government has criticised the study and said it fits a “campaign agenda”.

A Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) spokesperson said: “This paper has been produced to fit a clear campaign agenda and manipulates data in a way that makes it impossible to see the actual effects of badger culling on reducing TB rates.

“It is disappointing to see it published in a scientific journal.”

Badgers also carry bovine TB and farmers believe they help spread it to cattle.

According to the government, independent and past “published scientifically rigorous analysis of the disease shows that licensed badger culling is helping to drive down bTB in cull areas.”

Brian May has said Queen will not play Glastonbury next year after clashing with the festival’s founder over the controversial badger cull.

The 72-year-old guitarist and animal rights campaigner rubbished claims that his band had been booked to headline Glastonbury’s 50th anniversary event next year.

Founder Michael Eavis, 84, who is also a dairy farmer, has called May a “danger to farming” and criticised him for his opposition to the badger cull, which is aimed at preventing the spread of bovine TB.

Last year, Eavis’s support for the cull prompted the Downton Abbey actor Peter Egan to call on music fans to boycott Glastonbury.

Speaking on BBC Radio 2 on Friday, May said Queen, who are touring with American Idol’s Adam Lambert providing the vocals, would not perform at Glastonbury in 2020 unless “things changed radically”.

The fallout has been considerable. Forget the haves and the have-nots, Brexiters and remainers, north v south: some people are determined to make our disunited nation’s ultimate binary division the one between town and country. 

According to the popular caricature, one camp lives in concrete and glass towers, imbibes polluted air and superciliously treats the countryside as a playground for Disneyfied nature. The other resides in leafy lanes, brandishes shotguns and is increasingly besieged and undermined by city dwellers’ laws.

These two tribes, we are told, have clashed over foxhunting – a unique tradition or a barbaric relic according to taste. They’ve battled over badger culling – a vital disease control measure to protect cattle farmers or an unscientific muddle that’s cruel and pointless. And they’ve gone to war over dairy farming – an environmentally friendly and nutritious food production system or a cruel industry that turn animals into machines. 

The row over bird shooting licences is presented as the latest expression of the great divide. Is it a perverse attack on country livelihoods by townies who are happy to see curlews become extinct and lambs’ eyes pecked out because they hate shooting so much? Or is it an overdue, rational move to bring licences into line with wildlife laws and stop people massacring harmless jays and rooks for fun?

Culling badgers may help to spread TB further as it disrupts local populations and drives them into previously uninfected areas, a new study has found.

Scientists say unless strict rules are followed it may be better to carry out no culling at all rather than continuing an ineffective operation that makes things worse.

Campaigns to eliminate animals such as foxes, bats and wild boar to stop diseases spreading have been carried out on numerous occasions, with mixed results.

The badger cull conducted between 1998 and 2005 to protect British cattle from TB was one of the largest of its kind ever conducted, resulting in the death of 11,000 badgers.

While some locations saw infections drop, the trial also led to the disease spreading further into previously uninfected cattle and badger populations.

The BBC’s coverage of countryside issues is too “squeamish”, ignoring the gritty realities of rural life and favouring images of “fluffy badgers”, a report has found.

There is a deficit in reporting on rural affairs, with important stories overlooked, according to the independent review commissioned by the BBC Trust.

Issues of health, education and employment in rural areas are rarely covered, the report concluded, with the corporation preferring to focus on protests or animal stories with a “feelgood” ending.

Coverage of the badger cull provoked the greatest anger amongst rural dwellers.

The report noted: “The predominant use of images of healthy badgers to open or conclude a report was felt to weight the argument in favour of the anti-cull lobby. People asked where were the pictures of sick badgers with TB, or infected cows being shot, or a distraught farming family coming to terms with the loss of their animals.

The rollout of the badger cull in England has been “delayed and not postponed”, according to DEFRA secretary Owen Paterson.

Speaking to his local newspaper, the Shropshire MP said he was “bitterly disappointed” that the culls would not be widened to more counties this year.

And Mr Paterson pledged to do everything he can to stop the spread of bovine TB after a second year of pilot culls ends in Somerset and Gloucestershire this year.

The minister has repeatedly made it clear that he is committed to widening the culls to other areas affected by TB as part of a 25-year government strategy to eradicate the disease.

“This is not a postponement, it is a delay,” Mr Paterson told the Shropshire Star. “I feel bitterly disappointed that we cannot go any faster with this. We are delaying so that we can learn from the lessons of the pilots and move forward.”

The badger cull was a “costly policy failure” and a “PR disaster” which must be abandoned, a Labour minister has said.

Writing on the Telegraph’s website, Huw Irranca-Davies, Labour’s shadow environment secretary, calls on the Government to “rethink its strategy” and work with scientists and farmers to reach a “consensus on the way forward”.

MPs will on Thursday debate the two trial badger culls which have been criticised as ineffective and inhumane.

The Government has pushed forward with two controversial pilot culls of badgers, with plans to roll-out the scheme more widely in England if it can be done effectively, safely and humanely.

But a leaked review by independent experts assessing the pilot schemes was reported to have found that the number of badgers being killed in each area was much lower than the level needed to have a beneficial impact on TB outbreaks in cow herds.

An RSPCA advertisement claiming that the Government wanted to “shoot England’s badgers” has been banned for misleading people into thinking all badgers would be killed in culling areas.

The poster showed a picture of a badger, a bullet and a vaccination needle, asking: “Vaccinate or exterminate?”

People reading it were asked to sign a petition and send a £3 donation for the charity’s campaign against the cull.

Starting in August, the cull aimed to kill 5,000 badgers in Somerset and Gloucestershire, but was called off early after just 921 were killed.

The advertisement, which appeared before the cull began, stated: “The UK government wants to shoot England’s badgers. We want to vaccinate them – and save their lives. The government’s proposed badger cull could begin at any time, despite scientific evidence that slaughtering thousands of England’s badgers is unlikely to stop the spread of bovine TB in cattle.”

A total of 119 people, including Simon Hart, a Conservative MP, the Farmers’ Union of Wales, and Antoinette Sandbach, the Tory shadow minister for rural affairs in Wales, complained to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA).

Most of the complainants said the advertisement was “misleading” as the use of the term “exterminate” was “alarmist” because the cull was only taking place in two counties. The watchdog accepted that through campaigning and press coverage, consumers would know that “not all badgers would be culled”.

However, the general population would “not be aware of the proportion of the badger population that was expected to be culled”, it added. As this was the case, following up the question “Vaccinate or exterminate?” with “the UK government wants to shoot England’s badgers” implied “that all badgers would be eradicated in the cull areas”.

The ASA ruled out three further complaints, over claims and wording related to vaccination, and over the suggestion that scientific evidence showed a cull was “unlikely to stop the spread of bovine TB in cattle”.

A pilot badger cull in west Somerset is likely to be extended after marksmen missed their target to kill 70 per cent of the animals in the area.

Mr Paterson suggested that the blame for the shortfall actually lay with the “wild” and unpredictable nature of the badger.

He told BBC Spotlight: “The badgers moved the goalposts. We’re dealing with a wild animal, subject to the vagaries of the weather and disease and breeding patterns.”

Officials had originally planned to kill 5,000 badgers during the culls in Somerset and Gloucestershire, but the government now believes that the population is just 3,800. However, the marksmen have still managed to miss their target by 10 per cent.

A badger flash-mob protested today against a Government-led cull of the animals, outside the Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs (Defra).

Fifty ‘badgers’ danced to Queen guitarist Brian May’s own version of the popular YouTube Badgers song, which was inspired by Queen’s hit record Flash.

They burst into song at noon for five minutes as they called for the Government to ditch badger cull plans in favour of badger vaccinations to control bovine TB.

May said: “The Government’s determination to go ahead with the badger cull this summer once again proves how misguided and out of step with scientific fact and public opinion it is on this issue. Culling badgers is not the answer to eradicating bovine TB.

“Not only is the practice inhumane and impractical, it is also proven to be ineffective in tackling the disease, as has been made repeatedly clear by all the leading scientific experts. There is also a viable alternative, which I support: vaccination.”

Watch this space for more reports of a summer of badger based conflict!