Official Badger Cull Underway in England

Over the next six weeks as many as 5,000 badgers will be killed across England as part of a test program intended to seek the most effective and humane way to cull the animals, which have been linked to spreading the disease bovine tuberculosis.

The badger cull has drawn its share or criticism, especially by those who advocate the use of a vaccine which can cure the badgers of the disease. But Owen Paterson, Britain's environment secretary, said that the vaccine could not be used on badgers that already carry the disease, the Guardian reported.

"We know that despite the strict controls we already have in place, we won't get on top of this terrible disease until we start dealing with the infection in badgers as well as in cattle. That's the clear lesson from Australia, New Zealand, the Republic of Ireland and the USA," Patterson said.

"That is why these pilot culls are so important. We have to use every tool in the box because TB is so difficult to eradicate and it is spreading rapidly."

A key aspect of the pilot culls is to test the effectiveness of using peanuts to lure the badgers out of their burrows, whereby marksmen would fire upon the animals. Such a culling method has not been formally tested before, according to the BBC.

Cull opponent Dominic Dyer, of the advocacy group Care for the Wild, told the BBC that the planned cull is an "absolute scandal."

"There's no scientific or economic justification for the cull and it may make the spread (of TB) worse not better," he said.

"This is killing without protection -- they're not even testing [the culled animals] for TB and they're only monitoring the cull of a small number."

Care for the Wild reports that only 3 percent of the culled badgers will be tested to ensure they were killed humanely.

"It is very likely that many of them are lying injured, suffering a painful death," said Gavin Grant, chief executive of the the Royal Society of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

But even if they don't like the idea of the culling, some farmers see it as the only choice to protect their cattle.

"I've lost a third of my herd in the last two years -- it's completely devastating," he said.

"These are animals I know, they have characters, and I hear people being very passionate about badgers and I can empathize with them but they're not animals they deal with on a day-to-day basis and they have no idea what farmers like myself are going through," David Barton who keeps cattle on his farm in Cirencester, Gloucestershire, told the BBC.

"I understand people don't like the idea of it (the cull) -- I don't like the idea of it but it has to be addressed," he said. "In this area over 50 percent of the badgers are carrying TB."