It is relatively easy, in the digital age, to orchestrate a massive response to a consultation exercise. But how equal are the opportunities to influence debate when access to fast broadband connections are so patchy in rural areas like our own? The question has special relevance today with the news that the animal welfare charity the RSPCA was able to collect 40,000 messages of objection to the Government's plans to cull badgers in the battle against bovine TB. In terms of sheer numbers that level of response surely dwarfs anything from the farming groups and others who back the planned cull.

Public opinion, as measured by email, is not the only method that will be used by ministers when they finalise their stance on this policy. Nor should it be. But there will surely be many people in the countryside – and indeed, in the cities – who feel uneasy at the potential of the broadband network for wielding influence when access to the medium, at useable speeds, is extremely limited. We are certainly not suggesting the RSPCA has in any way 'cooked' the figures. As an entirely reputable organisation with a perfectly valid stance on this vexed issue it has absolutely no need to stoop to such tactics. It is self-evident that the majority of the population, which has little or no connection with livestock farming or agriculture, would say, if asked, that it was opposed to the killing of badgers.

'Old Brock' – eulogised in story books for generations and beautifully filmed and photographed so many times – is a much-loved icon of the British countryside and the symbol of the nation's wildlife trusts. It would be absurd to suggest that in any widespread public consultation exercise popular opinion would back the calls for a cull.

But it is valid to ask – when the means to make one's voice heard, via the electronic media, are so concentrated in the hands of the urban-dwelling masses – whether the 40,000 anti-cull sentiments, expressed through the RSPCA, deserves any special consideration? Should those 40,000 voices mean more than the far more modest number of livestock farmers who are calling for a selective cull of sick badgers in the hope of reducing outbreaks of this devastating disease that is causing such heartache and misery on the farm? We suggest not. The main consideration for those politicians and experts who must now sift the evidence from the public consultation must be whether or not a targeted cull is possible and could work to reduce the incidence of TB. The Western Morning News, which is extremely sympathetic to wildlife lovers, believes there is evidence to strongly suggest it is well worth a try and that to do virtually nothing beyond cull cattle and pay compensation to farmers when TB strikes is far worse than intervening to try to take out the disease where it exists in the wild.

Farmers who say kill all badgers are rightly condemned – but so are wildlife campaigners who say kill only cows. This consultation exercise is no substitute for a facts-based judgement from ministers. That is what we must get.