I am pleased to see that Geoff Edmond of the RSPCA and Michael Krause of the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust are taking the problem of badger-sett digging seriously (Evening Press, April 13).

However, given their concern, I am surprised to see that no reference is made to the fact that, since 1998, 11,000 badgers have been killed in a series of worthless tests to control TB in cattle.

Obviously their organisations must have known of, and approved of, these tests. Could it not be said that the people carrying out this badger digging are simply members of the public carrying on the Government's work?

And what of the Government? While they were wringing their hands and wasting millions of pounds of taxpayers' money trying to ban hunting, they were sanctioning the mass slaughter of a protected species.

I should add that the tests revealed that dead badgers did not spread TB in cattle and that the survivors left the test area to spread TB elsewhere. But then a ten-year-old could have predicted that.

Jeremy D Fox,

Malton Avenue,

York.

Updated: 09:58 Monday, April 17, 2006