Terms and conditions of a proposed cull of badgers to stop the spread of bovine TB are too involved and complex, according to the National Farmers' Union (NFU).

At the close of the nine-week consultation period on the proposals, the union has advised the Government to make the rules more manageable, if farmers are to carry out a cull satisfactorily.

Culls are scheduled to take place in two pilot areas next summer – once the badger-breeding season is over – one of them in the Westcountry.

They would be carried out by groups of farmers formed into companies and licensed to shoot free-running badgers under supervision. Badgers would be cleared in 70 per cent of defined TB hot-spot areas of 30 square kilometres.

But the NFU, while re-iterating its commitment to do everything to make the pilot culls work well, has raised a list of concerns about the details of the proposed rules. Chief among them is the TB management agreements, which tie farmers into culling on their land for four years, and are aimed at insuring that culling programmes would be completed, even if a farmer dropped out for some reason. The NFU has pointed out that licenses would be held by companies, which would not be able to enter into agreements on individual parcels of land should circumstances be changed.

The union also voiced concerns about a requirement that, for tenanted land, both the landlord and the tenant would have to enter a culling agreement. That would be both unnecessary and impractical, and only the person actually farming the land should be involved, it said.

A third concern voiced in the consultation was about costs, and here the NFU has called for realism on pricing. Farmer companies will be required to pay a deposit for their licence – and this should be calculated on their own expected costs, not based on calculations projected by bureaucrats, said the union.

Peter Kendall, NFU president, said: "In our response we have set out very clearly how the industry can deliver a humane and effective cull. I want to stress that the NFU is committed to help co-ordinate, plan and establish control groups to carry out badger controls in those areas blighted by TB.

"We take the challenges this brings very seriously. This is not going to be a short-term fix, and we are fully prepared for that."

He urged enviroment secretary Caroline Spelman and farming minister Jim Paice to take heed of the points that the NFU had made in its submission, so that the culling policy was a practical proposition, not a fiasco. "Then I am confident that the industry can achieve a consistently effective and humane cull, which provides significant, long-term benefits for farmers, for the Government, for the countryside and for the taxpayer," he said.