BADGER-culling has restarted in the region in a bid to stop the spread of TB in cattle.

A 147-square-kilometre area focusing on Bosbury, near Ledbury, has been identified as a designated culling area where as many badgers as possible are to be caged and shot.

This is the fifth year the culls have taken place, first implemented following the 1998 Krebs report, but the number of recorded cases of bovine TB has doubled in the last year.

The Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) aims to discover the extent of badgers' role in the problem of Bovine TB, identify conditions where culling may help prevent the spread of disease, and create scientific information to control TB in the future.

But the move has been condemned by badger groups, who claim the cull is a "waste of taxpayers' money".

"We don't believe the experiment will reveal any important data because it's not being carried out in a scientific way," said chairman of the Worcestershire Badger Society, Mike Weaver, who believes the Government's study is fundamentally flawed.

"The Government's veterinary advisor has recently withdrawn his backing for the scheme and we believe it will end up as a waste of £5m of taxpayers' money."

However, Worcestershire and Herefordshire have been highlighted as one of six areas in the country where Bovine TB is a major concern.

In the first four months of 2003, 1,000 new incidents of the disease were recorded in Britain, while only 569 were noted in the same period last year.

"We don't know what causes it, but badgers have been found to carry TB and in some instances, where they have been in contact with cattle, they too have contracted the disease,"said Andrew Goodman, county chairman of the NFU.

The culls started on Thursday, May 1, and will continue until the end of January 2004. Experiments are halted during February and March to allow females to rear cubs in safety.

n Tomorrow: Great Badger Debate.