The badger cull pilot scheme has been proved to be expensive and ineffective and many badgers have now been pointlessly killed. Those who survived may well have fled to other areas, thereby increasing the risk of the spread of bTB. As a very concerned resident of North Somerset I ask that you please support this petition.

The total cost of the Welsh Government vacination programme in 2012-where very,very few badgers were shown to have bovine TB was 1.2 million pounds. this was over half amillion pounds less than the cost of the policing of the Gloucestershire cull this summer. Where is the economic-let alone etical-sense in this?

The actions of North Somerset Council should reflect the will of the majority of the residents and not support badger culling, but proactively support badger vaccination.

The cull has been an atrocity, and an utter failure. Many hundreds of badgers are dead, and the only likely outcome is that bTB will spread due to perturbation. Vaccination of badgers is the only workable option

Badgers play such an insignificant part in btb transmission that wholesale slaughter is not the way to go. Policing costs have made culling hugely expensive in both money terms and the reputation of British farmers. Vaccination is far more cost effective and removes badgers from the equation while the farming industry addresses the main problem of cattle to cattle transmission.

Having read extensively on the subject and studied wildlife all my life I passionately believe that vaccination is the only way forward. At the age of 65 it has taken the otter my entire lifetime to make a tenuous recovery from the sort of persecution that badgers are currently suffering.

This cull is political and not based on science. The Government's own Independent Panel has determined that the cull is inhumane and ineffective. The British Veterinary Association has concluded that the free shooting of badgers is inhumane. The incidence of the disease is falling outside the cull zones as well as inside. Nowhere is this more evident than in Wales where they have refused to cull. Improvements are the result of more careful animal husbandry. The disease is devastating for farmers but they are being mislead into thinking that killing badgers will help them. The current test used produces a 1% false positive and a 20%false negative. Therefore, latent disease in the herd materialises in time. Help the Badgers and the farmers but not through culling badgers.

I hope that the culls will stop and be replaced by vaccination programs.