A cull of badgers in the Westcountry could begin within a year as the Government vows to do all it can to tackle TB in the region’s cattle herds.

Whitehall officials will this week step up the pace of work drawing up a blueprint for a targeted cull of diseased badgers, which ministers hope can start before the breeding season in spring 2011.

Lawyers acting for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs will closely scrutinise any proposal to insure against any possible legal challenge.

New farming minister Jim Paice has told civil servants he wants to “get on with this as soon as possible” after the policy was included in the coalition agreement.

But he stressed the need to “get absolutely everything sorted before we actually commence” because wildlife campaigners, including the Badger Trust, will look to challenge the plan through judicial review.

“We must make sure that either they are convinced they can’t win, or that we win if it does go to it,” Mr Paice told the Western Morning News.

“Rest assured, if [the Badger Trust] were to win a judicial review, culling badgers would be off the table for the foreseeable future.”

The Badger Trust insists that if the government’s policy really was science-led, killing badgers would not be considered at all.

Chairman David Williams said: “We do not yet know what ‘badger control’ means – vaccination, killing the protected species or effective biosecurity measures.

“In the case of killing badgers, repeated, properly structured scientific research, authoritatively and publicly published, has demonstrated that killing them would be of only marginal benefit, and even that would not be permanent. In addition there is a real risk of making the situation worse.”

But Mr Paice believes there is “ample scientific evidence to show that it’s an important part of attacking TB”.

A ten-year study by the Independent Study Group (ISG) concluded culling could not “meaningfully contribute” to the control of the disease because it displaces the badgers, spreading the disease over a wider area.

But Mr Paice claims the “slightly odd” conclusions were not peer reviewed and the economic arguments made were outside the study’s original brief. I think there is plenty of other evidence of what has happened in other countries and all the other work in this country in previous, but we have got to stack it all together and have a case.”

He added it was a “reasonable assumption” that any cull would take place in the Westcountry, one of the areas worst hit with thousands of cattle destroyed every year.

Detailed work is being carried out into the size of the area in which a cull would take place, with any “start up issues” which arise from an imminent cull in Wales also likely to influence the plan.

“I would hope we’ll start before next year’s breeding season,” Mr Paice added.

Last week, new figures appeared to show culling has a positive effect in reducing the bovine TB. The latest annual review of results of the seven-year culling trials that took place up to 2005, known as the Krebs Trials, reported that in the fourth year after the trials ended, there was evidence of “a constant benefit of proactive culling”.

NFU Devon county chairman, David Horton, said: “I would be delighted if we could cull now, but it has to be done properly and within the letter of the law.”​