Kill the cull?

According to new research, the badger cull isn't working. We take a look at the science.

- JAMES FAIR

BY AUTUMN 2022, IT WILL be nine years since the then government initiated the Gloucestershire and Somerset.

Since then, culling has expanded to cover nearly 37,000km? of the south-west and west of England, and (not including figures from 2021) taken the lives of some 143,000 badgers at a cost to the public purse of £47 million.

If it carries on as planned, some campaigners opposed to culling have estimated that 280,000 badgers will be killed, perhaps three-quarters of the entire UK population.

And the result of this wholescale, licensed killing of a protected species? According to a new study, there has been no significant decrease in levels of bovine tuberculosis (bTB) in cattle that can be attributed to culling, the sole reason for embarking on this drastic course of action in the first place.

You might expect that new, peer-reviewed science, even in an area as controversial as badger culling, might help to draw the two sides of the debate together. While all three of the study's authors are high-profile opponents of the policy, it is also important to point out that the peer-review process involved four experts in epidemiology - the science of diseases and how they spread - evaluating and approving the paper.

But, if anything, the pros and antis are even more polarised. The Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) said the authors had worked to "a clear campaign agenda”, “manipulated data” and that was it “disappointing to see [the research] published in a scientific journal.”

The biggest farming union, the NFU - which has consistently taken a pro-cull stance - reiterated figures from a previous, considerably smaller study that showed badger culling had reduced bTB rates in herds of cattle.