Devastating blow to badgers as Natural England considers more cull licences
- Badger Trust Staff Team
- Feb 28, 2024
- 5 min read
Supplementary cull licence applications in heavily culled English counties reveal a woeful disregard for the science around disease spread.
The announcement that Natural England is again considering more supplementary killing of badgers is little surprise. Still, it is a devastating blow to anyone who cares about wildlife, the importance of science in policy-making, and a farming industry struggling to control cattle-to-cattle disease spread among its herds.
Supplementary culls are being sought by farming groups in Derbyshire, Gloucestershire, Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire, Oxfordshire, Shropshire, Somerset, and Warwickshire, where 70+% of badgers have already been shot under licence in a failed bid to eradicate bovine TB (bTB) an infectious disease among cattle. Natural England has already overseen the killing of more than 210,000 badgers in England to March 2023 – we are due to hear the kill figures for 2023/2024 soon.
The badger death toll already represents an estimated half of the entire UK population of one of our most charismatic and well-loved protected animals.
Yet bovine TB still accounts for the premature slaughter of less than 0.5% of cattle in England in any one year, a proportion which has barely shifted since before badger culling began in 2013, despite Westminster government claims to the contrary.
What are supplementary culls?
Government policy requires that more than 70% of badgers are killed in a cull area in the first year, and then more are shot every subsequent year for a total of four years to keep the population down to 30% of its starting number. This cull method is called ‘intensive culling’. ‘Supplementary culling’ continues the killing in the same areas for another two years.
Supplementary culling might be introduced for one of two reasons claimed:
farming groups failed to kill ‘enough’ badgers during the four-year intensive cull (though Defra and Natural England annually claim that every year’s cull has been 'sufficient to deliver expected policy benefits'), or
they have killed enough badgers, but there is evidence that there is a known surviving population of badgers infected with bTB, which now pose a known disease risk to other cattle.
However, population estimates are made by the cull contractor, not independent researchers, and so understanding the percentage of a population killed or other risk factors to a specific population such as road traffic collisions, resource availability, or badger crime that each population faces is unknown. This makes determining the percentage of a population killed little more than guesswork.
Furthermore, unlike cattle, as no one tests badgers for bTB infection before or after culling, there are no grounds to believe that Defra, Natural England, APHA, or farming groups know the bTB status of badgers in any area and so lack actual evidence to the second claim
Over 94% of all bTB cases are spread cattle-to-cattle
What Defra, APHA, Natural England, researchers and the TB Advisory Service alike do know is that 94% of all bTB cases arise from cattle-to-cattle infections, not from badgers or any one of the possible wild or domestic hosts, including deer, sheep, pigs, llamas, farm cats, earthworms, etc.
At the National TB Advisory Service Conference in November 2023, speaker after speaker told attendees that most cattle bTB infections are caught from other cattle. Delegates were also repeatedly told that more reliable testing of cattle, far better hygiene (biosecurity), and the deployment of the available cattle vaccine were what the farming industry needed as a matter of urgency. However, as England’s Deputy Chief Vet said in her opening remarks, officials were ‘following Ministerial policy’.
Yet this policy fails to use ‘every tool in the toolkit’ – the oft-quoted DEFRA line – and relies on wiping out half the population of an untested native wild animal to control bTB spread rather than address the elephant (or should that be ‘cow’?) in the room: effective cattle measures.
Wales and Scotland do not cull badgers and reduce bTB more effectively than England
Wales and Scotland do not cull badgers and achieve much lower rates of bTB by focusing on cattle, the primary bTB disease spreaders. For example, Wales applies stricter controls to cattle via country-wide annual testing, restrictions to cattle movement, and mandated farm biosecurity. By paying greater epidemiological attention to cattle, the Welsh bTB strategy is amongst the most progressive and effective bTB control programmes employed in Great Britain to date.
And a recent report from a Northern Ireland whole-genome government-backed study showed that cattle were 800 times more likely to pass bTB to badgers than badgers were to cattle. The report stated, “...cattle were likely driving the local epidemic, with transmission from cattle to badgers being more common than badger to cattle.”
Time for truth and an end to the badger cull
Badger Trust once again calls for an immediate end to all badger culls operated by the UK government in England.
It’s time to give the public, taxpayers and farmers a truthful picture of the actual level of bTB disease hidden in the English cattle herd and to immediately end a distracting, destructive, and costly badger cull policy that does not stop the spread of bTB in cattle.
The government owes that much to the taxpayer and the farming industry at least.
Further information:
Tackling Bovine TB Together
Our report, ‘Tackling Bovine TB Together: Towards Sustainable, Scientific and Effective bTB Solutions’, brings together the evidence around bTB spread and the government’s attempts to control it over the last fifty years. It contains clear and evidence-based recommendations for tackling the disease and protecting our natural world.
The UK government's own data show cattle-to-cattle spread is the primary transmission source for bTB, yet it has been reluctant to use the most effective cattle-based methods to take the steps needed to stop the disease.
Our report’s recommendations point to a more effective approach for Great Britain, especially England, focusing on cattle: a more comprehensive cattle testing programme using the most reliable combination test methods, cattle vaccination, and enhanced cattle biosecurity, including cattle movement.
Over a decade of badger culling brings no meaningful change to cattle prematurely slaughtered due to bTB
Since 2012, there has been almost no change in the number of England’s cattle prematurely slaughtered* each year due to bTB infection.
In 2012 0.5% of cattle were prematurely slaughtered due to bTB infection. In 2022, the figure was 0.4%. It should be noted that from the years 2012-2021 the figure was 0.5 or 0.6%**. The change in the number of cattle prematurely slaughtered between 2012 and 2023 has remained statistically the same since before the cull began, despite a significant expansion of the badger cull.
*We use the phrase ‘prematurely slaughtered’ because all farmed cattle are destined for slaughter, whether as cull cattle once their dairy productivity fails or as beef cattle ready for market. Farmed cattle are rarely destined to live out natural lifespans: the key issue seems to be the timing of their slaughter – is it in line with the farm's schedule or not?
** ‘Table A1. Bovine TB incidence by herd and cattle level in England’ in the Appendices of our 'Tackling Bovine TB Together' report. Data from DEFRA.
Show your support for our call to End the Cull and Save Badgers.
Following the publication of our report ‘Tackling Bovine TB Together’, we call for an immediate end to all badger culls operated by the UK government in England. Will you join us?
