It would all be a whole lot easier if the cull was of sick badgers, animals that were dying slowly of starvation because they had caught the horrible disease. But it's not.

Towards the end of last year, trials found the much-vaunted Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) test could not be relied on 100 per cent. So it was dropped from the plans, and there had to be a cull re-think.

The PCR aimed to show which badger setts contained infected animals and which were clean, by using a chemical probe pushed through the earth and into the lairs.

It had enormous appeal. After all, few could cavil at a policy of taking out dying wildlife – thus saving the vast majority of fit and healthy badgers, as well tens of thousands of beef and dairy cattle, llamas, alpacas, even cats and dogs. Saving farming families from despair, unable to trade their livestock because of movement restrictions and facing bankruptcy, and saving the British taxpayer from forking out half a billion pounds in compensation, was a "no-brainer" too.

But the proposal put forward in the Government consultation paper last autumn was for the culling of all badgers, irrespective of their health status, across 70 per cent of limited hot-spot areas (probably three of them in the Westcountry). No more talk about a cull of sick badgers.

So what will emerge as a policy after the inevitable judicial review and other legal challenges? Will there even be time for a badger cull next summer, once the spring breeding season is over?

The bungling efforts of the Welsh Assembly with their proposed cull did nothing at all to help the English campaign, badly drafted and wide open for a successful legal challenge.

The only spin-off has been the transformation of the Welsh Assembly building's security system into something closely resembling Fort Knox. A sign, perhaps, of things to come here.

If the trial culls go ahead, and if they are found to be successful and a wider cull of hot-spot areas is permitted, it will still take years for bovine TB to be wiped out of the badger population – time the farming industry just doesn't have.

Surely the perfecting of a vaccine for cattle should be stepped up, and pressure brought on the EU to allow TB-vaccinated cattle meat to be accepted? Most of the opposition, as always, is led by the French, as part of their "let's stuff the English wherever possible" psyche, some might say. It is the French, of course, who simply cannot understand our national squeamishness about killing our wildlife, far less actually passing laws to protect badgers. After all, they have the same word for badger as they have for shaving brush – blaireau.

It was a Conservative Government that passed the Badger Protection Act. The result has been a burgeoning population, frequently unable to feed itself adequately and thus susceptible to disease.

If you are a farmer or landowner it is a privilege and pleasure to have badgers on your land. I fervently hope that a policy will emerge ensuring them a healthy and lasting future.