SO the Government is planning three more years of badgerculling in Somerset and Gloucestershire, and four years to come in Dorset, despite scientific evidence strongly against it.

Wonder not, when you remember that DEFRA stands so much for farming interests.

It cost £7.3m, at least, to kill 1,771 badgers in 2013 in the first two counties – even though it could be cows giving the bovine tuberculosis disease to badgers.

Inoculation of cows is obviously the answer.

But the mainly Conservatives in the Government won’t listen even to critics of the cull in their own party, as well as strong opposition throughout the land.

Both the 2013 culls were “unsuccessful”.

SHEILA CLAYTON, Southampton United Animal Charities.