The FUW today rebuffed claims by animal rights groups that proposals to cull badgers to control bovine TB would make it impossible to know which parts of a control strategy may work.
FUW vice president Brian Walters said: "There is solid scientific data that shows controlling badger numbers reduces incidences of TB by between 50 and 60 per cent. There is also solid scientific evidence showing that cattle controls, when applied in the absence of a wildlife reservoir, reduce TB incidences.
"We therefore know that a combination of both policies will accelerate the eradication of TB.
"No-one with a rudimentary knowledge of basic scientific principles would deny this, and in my mind claims to the contrary by animal rights groups such as the RSPCA and the Badger Trust demonstrate their wish to mislead the general public."
Mr Walters, a Carmarthen organic dairy farmer, also condemned comments by animal rights groups as "deliberately inflammatory" and "designed to mislead the general public".
"The RSPCA has described the decision as one that will ‘‘eliminate badgers from a large area of the Welsh countryside’’. Yet even after five years of badger removal in the English trials badgers numbers remained at levels well above the European average.
"The Minister has also made it clear that healthy badgers could be relocated into the area in order to ensure a sustainable and healthy livestock and badger population would coexist, side by side.
"The comments of the RSPCA are therefore utterly misleading, and the general public must not to allow these to deceive them. Anyone who reads this nonsense should take a step back and look at this situation rationally.
"The science shows that the prevalence of disease in badgers is thousands of per cent higher than it is in cattle, and we know that the disease can pass back and forth between both species, so we clearly need to control the disease in both cattle and badgers.
"That does not mean eradicating either badgers or cattle. The science supports the measures that have been proposed and no one should allow themselves to be misled by statements made by the RSPCA, the Badger Trust, or anyone else."