The Department of Agriculture has ordered 25,000 body bags for badgers as its cruel snaring and culling continues across the country. Department officials confirmed that a cull of 6,000 badgers is planned over the next 12 months. This latest assualt on a supposedly protected species is part of a failed TB-eradication scheme which has to-date claimed the lives of an estimated 100,000 badgers. "Culling is expected to continue for several years," an Irish Independent report outlines, referring to a Department advert in which it tenders for the supply of 25,000 units of 'Packaging Solution for Biological Material'. This is a Department of Agriculture euphemism for badger body bags, used for collection, dispatch and post-mortem examination of badgers that have been caught in snares and shot in the head. In a Dail question to Agriculture Minister Simon Coveney on 23rd September, ICABS President Maureen O'Sullivan TD condemned the cruel cull. "We are talking about a most inhumane, cruel and barbaric way of dealing with bovine TB, when first, it has not been fully proven that the badger is totally responsible for the disease, and there are doubts over some of the experiments that initially proved that was the case. Second, a reduction in TB in cattle can also be linked to improved husbandry and other factors, not especially through the badger cull. Could the Minister explain the urgency to kill thousands of an ecologically important species, namely, the badger?" she stated. She asked why "a badger cull is being pursued and why the Department has tendered for 25,000 units of biological material, essentially body bags for badgers, when it has given a commitment to roll out a vaccination programme to control bovine TB". Read her question and the response at https://www.kildarestreet.com/debates/?id=2014-09-23a.129