Badger Trust’s case won on three challenges

The Badger Trust’s appeal to have the badger cull in Wales quashed, succeeded on three key challenges.

The main focus was on wording used in the legal documents underpinning the cull which referred to the whole of Wales and not the pilot area alone.

The TB Eradication (Wales) Order 2009 should have been confined to the Intensive Action Pilot Area (IAPA) in north Pembrokeshire, not across the whole of the country. 

The three judges presiding over the case said that the Welsh Assembly Government was wrong to have created the order for the whole of Wales because its consultation on the basis for a zone, was supported only by evidence drawn from within the IAPA itself.

The judges also backed the Trust on two other challenges – although the verdict was not unanimous. 

Two judges did not agree with the assembly government’s assertion that a 9% reduction in TB amounted to a substantial cut in disease levels.

Additionally, two said they felt the rural affairs minister should have served evidence which led the Court of Appeal to conclude that the benefits of a cull in the IAPA outweighed the harm it would do to badgers.

The minister did not serve this evidence because she believed she was not required to do so.