Sickening video shows piles of culled badgers dumped in a Bakewell barn

A horrifying video - too graphic to be featured - shows workers bringing the dead animals into a stone barn, in the tiny hamlet of Alport, and leaving them in large buckets.

Distressing images from a hidden camera show piles of the creatures inside large barrels - as various people drop them off for storage.

In one chilling moment a man arrives in a van to collect all the bodies, casually taking them out of the barrels and dumping them on the floor before throwing them into the back of the vehicle and driving away.

Campaign Group Derbyshire Against the Cull, who shot the video, say ‘cull contractors’ arrive every day at the barn to unload their kills.

And every weekday morning a ‘body collector’ arrives to dispose of the carcasses.

The badger culling programme - involving a mix of shooting and trapping - was first trialled in 2013 in the south west then rolled out across other parts of the country.

Last month the Government announced it would be extended to Derbyshire.

Bovine tuberculosis (TB) is known to be able jump the species barrier and cause TB-like infection in humans and animals.

Though the disused barn in the video is secured with a heavy combination padlock Derbyshire Against the Cull say it is ‘not suitable for storing material which is supposedly hazardous’.

A spokesman said: “This barn has a large open window and a door which clearly has gaps underneath it - it would not prevent animals getting in.

“EU regulations state these sites must not be on farmland - while this barn is clearly in a sheep field with dozens of people visiting and dropping off supposedly hazardous waste each day.”

Reacting to the shocking images Dominic Dyer, CEO of to the Badger Trust, said: “These images from Derbyshire Against the Cull lift the lid on the brutal reality of the badger cull which is taking place across 11 counties of England.”

However Keith Harrop, owner of New Farm and the barn where the video was shot, said he was willing to ‘take stick’ by allowing his barn to be used because badgers were ‘massively out of control’.

Adding that ‘I love wildlife as much as anyone and don’t kill anything without a reason’ he said: “We test our cattle for TB every six months but as soon as they’re out to graze again in the summer they pick it up from badgers.

"Ever since they became a protected species it’s been a problem – if you have 20 rabbits in a field it's fine but if you have 100 you have myxomatosis.

"I’ve been affected by this as have most farmers around here and I’m so sick of losing cattle I’m willing to put up with a bit of stick.”

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