The Badger Crowd is a support and fundraising coalition including Badger Groups and Trusts around the UK. Ecologist Tom Langton has fronted recent challenges with support from ‘The Badger Crowd’. The legal team is Richard Turney and Ben Fullbrook from Landmark Chambers, London & solicitor Lisa Foster and paralegal Hannah Norman of Richard Buxton Environmental and Public Law, Cambridge.
Dominic Woodfield of the ecological consultancy Bioscan UK is working extensively on aspects of the case is a national authority on ecological impact assessment and has provided expert witness evidence on ecological assessment including impacts on SSSI’s. Many other scientists, researchers and legal commentators assist in the background.
The Badger Crowd believes that legal challenges are an important fight, not just for the badger but also for the future of our countryside and the farming industry. The badger cull policy is failing farmers, tax payers and our precious wildlife and will make the bTB epidemic worse.
If it had been known last Christmas that a Labour government would be in power by July of this year, an imminent end of the cull would have been anticipated. With a public inquiry set up into how the killing of 230,000 badgers could ever have been allowed to happen. The science supporting culling has continued to become increasingly uncertain and is now close to breaking point (here) with many learned institutions poised to be shaken over one of the more serious biological revelations for a generation.
Labour had pledged that it would end the cull, even put a statement in their manifesto that labelled badger culling ‘ineffective’ to send the message to voters. Surely it would end immediately, as ineffective = unlawful to continue. Voters must have had that in mind when they voted.
Unfortunately, that is not the way things went. True, the plan that would otherwise have moved forward for ‘targeted‘ or ‘epidemiological’ culling was well and truly scrapped (here). But incredibly Defra and Natural England hung on by their fingertips to the increasingly frail scientific justification for the ‘model’ that is the Cumbria Area 32/Hotspot 21 ‘Low Risk Area’ 100% cull. They have added a new cull area next door to its failed exemplar (here). This is to continue until 2027 at least and, just possibly, more areas could be added, potentially lasting until the end of this Parliament (2029). ‘Intensive’ and ‘Supplementary’ culling remain in place this year and next.
In Cumbria, the area north of the old cull area has been infected with bTB. Why? Because trading of infected stock continues from infected herds incorrectly declared TB-Free nearby, and cattle testing is only done every four years. Which is truly crazy so close to the original hotspot. Farms within 15 Km of hotspots sharing grazing or exchanging stock should quite obviously be on annual or more frequent testing. The breakdown investigation rules actually favour a cluster developing. APHA assumes the recorded breakdown is the index case, not a nearby farm, and allows 30 days for farms within 3.0 Km radius of the breakdown to sell off stock before radial testing begins. It’s a neglectful recipe for creating a TB cluster. It is one of the things Reed and Zeichner needed to fix in Week 1, and civil servants should have told them so.
Why has ineffectual TB management perpetuated – why is the new broom still in the cupboard? Apparently, around a year ago, with Labour uncertain of winning a big electoral majority, Steve Reed then the Shadow Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, gave assurances to the NFU that ‘some’ badger culling would be allowed to continue. He did this without a good knowledge of the issue, and apparently without the knowledge of Party researchers. It was a sleazy back door deal for political support in 2024.
Over the last four weeks or so in September, badger blood mixed with persistent rain, as around 10,000 badgers were needlessly shot, often inhumanely. More will die this month at an average rate of 300 a day. Another 10,000 or so badgers are to be killed next year, and an unspecified, smaller number will be killed in 2027 until 2029, because Steve Reed made a pre-election commitment to keep culling going – without understanding the real disease control needs – for political gain.
But we have seen this before. In Northern Ireland in 2021 the Ulster Farmers Union had a similar commitment to ‘wildlife intervention’ (i.e. badger culling) from the ‘top’ in DAERA that they were impatient to see brought forward (Case 2021 here). This was done by suggesting that there was a need (unevidenced scientifically) for badger culling to accompany better cattle testing. Dodgy deals behind people’s backs, for political gain, and irrespective of the cost to the taxpayer. It has to stop.
The figures speaks for themselves. Herd BTB breakdowns in the very first cull area in Gloucestershire have changed little since 2013, after nine years of persistent badger culling.
With a downward trend in ‘confirmed’ (OTFW) breakdowns prior to the start of culling, data is consistent with benefits from continued enhanced cattle controls hitting the limits of their effectiveness. But the poor sensitivity of the skin test has retained diseased cattle less responsive to the SICCT and gamma test, and kept the area as diseased as it was at the start. Elsewhere in Gloucestershire it’s a similar story. A humiliating moment for Defra and APHA, who know that badger culling is ineffective and that the BTB testing procedures need a revolution, much as they do in Republic of Ireland. There is a dire need to drill down on the disease, especially in the larger dairy herds. Without this £Millions of taxpayer and farmers money will be wasted each week chasing impossible outcomes.
Area 1-Gloucestershire has seen a large percentage rise in number of cattle (up by 20% or 4,124), despite the number of herds decreasing by 13. It is well known that disease rises as herds get larger, so why are the public being asked to support a process that is making things worse? And who is going to step up to resolve the crisis?
The continuing questions over uncertainty in the published outcome of the Randomised Badger Culling Trial (RBCT) have rumbled on over the summer of 2024, and were reported on (here).
Why are the statistical elements of the RBCT so important? Because the government badger cull policy rests all but entirely on them. It was the science that DEFRA has used to create policy and in court to defend their decisions to experiment with badger culling. The RBCT claimed badger culling can reduce bovine TB in cattle; very many subsequent studies are heavily derived from it, to the point that if it is wrong, it will send a wrecking ball through dozens of publications, reports and reviews. The stakes could not be higher.
Disease benefits claimed for badger culling by civil servants and politicians are in reality, far more likely due to implementation of additional cattle measures. But there is continued inference that badger culling is a cause of disease reduction because such benefits might be “predicted” from the results of the RBCT.
The chronology of published and pre-printed science on the statistical analysis of the RBCT as it relates to proactive culling is growing, so here is a summary with clickable links:
The ‘Comment’ submission to the Royal Society Open Science is an extensive response to the two new Mills et al. (2024) papers which reproduced much of Torgerson et al.’s models, whilst re-interpreting the results.
The abstract of the Torgerson et al. ‘Comment’ is as follows:
Abstract Re-evaluation of statistical analysis of the Randomised Badger Culling Trial (RBCT) by Torgerson et al. 2024 was rebutted by Mills et al. 2024 Parts I and II. The rebuttal defended the use of count rather than rate when considering bovine tuberculosis herd incidence. The defence makes biologically implausible use of Information Criterion for appraisal diagnostics; overfits data; and has erroneous Bayesian analyses. It favours ‘goodness of fit’ over ‘predictive power’, for a small data set, when the study was to inform application. Importantly, for ‘total’ bTB breakdown: (‘confirmed’ (OTF-W) +‘unconfirmed’ (OTF-S)), where modern interpretation of the main diagnostic bTB test better indicates the incidence rate of herd breakdown, there is no effect in cull and neighbouring areas, across all statistical models. The RBCT was a small, single experiment with unknown factors. With respect to the paradigm of reproducibility and the FAIR principles, the original RBCT analysis and recent efforts to support it are wholly unconvincing. The 2006 conclusion of the RBCT that “badger culling is unlikely to contribute positively to the control of cattle TB in Britain” is supported, but the route to such a position is revised in the light of modern veterinary understanding and statistical reappraisal.
The new Comment, that has not yet been peer-reviewed, highlights what is described as selective reporting, misleading interpretation, implausible model selection and coding anomalies. It will be of interest to Ministers, Civil Servants, scientists and politicians who currently, under the new Labour administration, are ‘refreshing’ the bovine TB strategy, and policy.
The two Mills et al. papers were published just a few days before the Intensive and Supplementary badger cull licences were issued for 2024, providing a rationale for culling to continue.
Who is really in charge of Bovine TB control at Defra?
It’s very strange. The brand new Labour Government’s manifesto says that badger culls are ‘ineffective’, yet they will ‘honour’ those existing ineffective cull contracts. Doesn’t sound right? Furthermore, they say that they will not issue new culling licences, but then issue a licence on 6th September to start a new ineffective cull, with one group boasting that they killed 22 adult and young badgers over the weekend.
It seems that great efforts are being made to avoid explaining what Labour mean by ‘ineffective’ culling. The expansion of the culls from February 2026 to the end of 2029 looks and walks like a quacking duck manifesto u-turn, if the consultation that closed last week is any guide.
It looks like the brand new licence for what is called Low Risk Area culling have started in Cumbria across most of a zone called Hotspot 29, with around 1,000 mostly healthy badgers to be shot dead over an area of around 350 sq km. Actually, according to local knowledge in Penrith, it started (unlawfully) around six weeks ago, when at least one participating farmer was told to get on with it. The area is below Carlisle running south, bordered to the west by the river Eden, and to the east side of Penrith. Specifically, much of Hotspot 29 forms the cull zone, then the area surrounding the current 4 breakdowns will form the Minimum Intervention Area (MIA) where all badgers are targeted. The land to the north and south of MIA will form the outer area for some culling. The area north of Penrith to the West of the river Eden has had one breakdown. This area is sandwiched between the A6/M62 boundaries and could also get some culling.
The Appearance is that a culling licence has been arranged by the same cull company that ran the previous Cumbria cull, Area 32 south of Penrith, already reported in detail. It’s where culling started after cattle testing had reduced breakdowns close to zero, and bTB was found to be embedded in a handful of chronic farms – not badgers at all. In Hotspot 29, livestock farming is generally being run down, with several farms closing and the older generations taking Rural Payment Agency retirement deals. Badgers are a scapegoat for this miserable demise and the local gamekeepers are all over it, believing badgers are the problem because they have been told so.
Any badger cull licence issued will have been issued due to intense pressure from farming industry bodies who have been gearing up to cull north of Penrith since the end of winter. It was long promised. They made preparations in May, but then Rishi Sunak called the election, and Labour said they would end the culls and not issue new licences. So why do DEFRA / APHA appear to have said ‘yes’ to this new badger cull, despite the failure of badger culling in Area 32? 1,115 badgers have been killed there since 2018 for no good reason at all (here).
Hotspot 29. Herd breakdowns 2013-2024. Note in 2020 due to covid restrictions, cattle testing was suspended. This resulted in increased trading of diseased cattle and further infections in subsequent years. In 2022 many new enhanced tests began to address the 2021 increase in the area, with the APHA/CVO epidemiological mistake of blaming it on badgers. It is what the 2018 LRA policy calls a ‘precautionary’ measure, and is the travesty of a failed policy that Labour now perpetuates, despite promising not to.
Few breakdowns have occurred in this area during the past 10 years. Killing hundreds of healthy badgers because of the trading of infected cattle and mixed grazing is unnecessary and disgraceful.
So what’s going on? Do Steve Reed and Dan Zeichner have a proper handle on their civil servants – are they running the shop or not? Christine Middlemiss met with Steve Reed recently, still insisting badgers are to blame, based on her dubious scientific understanding. Has she overstepped the mark and will the Ministers turn a blind eye? We need to know. This week in response to a Parliamentary Question, (here) we see the same old language creeping back in, with words prepared for Daniel Zeichner saying “the gap between the end of one form of badger disease control and the successful deployment of another, should be as narrow as possible to bank the maximum disease control benefits.” But there has been no evidence of tangible benefits to bank from the ineffective badger culls, and badger vaccination is a total distraction and waste of time. Why is he letting the old rhetoric prevail, distracting from the task in hand to revolutionize the cattle testing system and saving taxpayers £Millions? Just doesn’t add up.
Hotspot area (HS29) was established in January 2023 in response to the increase in OTF-W breakdowns in the area over the previous years, a result of infected cattle trading and 4 yearly testing. It covers 510 square km. Enhanced TB surveillance measures have been implemented in cattle across the whole hotspot area, with collection of ‘found dead’ badger and wild deer carcasses. The problem appears to be a group of landowners pursuing an original ‘Potential Hotspot 29’ designation to be upgraded to full hotspot status, in order to apply for a cull licence.
Meetings were held locally by the NFU acting alongside the cull company who were encouraging all the farmers/landowners to sign up, together with supplying/distributing, peanuts and equipment to farmers for baiting. The intention seemed to be to cull 95% of badgers ‘before they became a problem’. Being told by someone: “just get on with shooting and don’t wait for the licence to be issued”. Rumours suggest that local farmers were wound up by this rhetoric until they were champing at the bit to get on with it. Groups have been seen out lamping at night, with an eye witness to two separate groups shooting across the valley from opposite directions at the same target.
There are currently only six breakdowns in Hotspot 29. With four in a cluster to the east of Penrith. One of this cluster is Hole Farm, Ousby, in a general area where unlawful culling has been reported. It is doubtful if Natural England and the police will investigate due to lack of guidance and resources.
Meanwhile in and around the failed Cull Area 32 breakdowns continue despite badger culling and vaccination. When will they twig they are wasting their time and other peoples money with huge human and animal welfare costs?
Hotspot 29
In Spring 2024, the APHA introduced a staged strategy for BTB hotspots. To determine whether an index (initial) case should trigger a hotspot area, APHA vets will try to establish the likely origin of infection for the affected herd or cluster of herds. If the origin of the index case(s) is likely to be the introduction of TB-infected cattle into the herd, then APHA will not instigate a hotspot area and the standard procedures for a normal OTFW breakdown in the LRA are followed, including radial surveillance testing to monitor for any spread from those introductions. APHA has said for many years, most LRA breakdowns are due to cattle movements, confirmed by Whole Genome Sequencing. But demonstration of shared strains between cattle and badgers once cattle have polluted the landscape is now sufficient to cull badgers, without evidence of directionality. This dumbing down is simply bad science with no justification and should be considered unlawful. (See here)
The Defra 2014 strategy predicted LRA TB freedom by 2025. Just look at how badly things are going. Herd incidence has nearly doubled. Largely because APHA are only now increasing cattle testing measures (e.g. from four-yearly testing to annual and 6 monthly) hence more disclosure and with badger blame to cover their inadequacies. Government strategy has been so poor that they need something to be the cause other than their own failings and neglect.
Rise of BTB herd incidence in the Low Risk Area of England over the last 25 years due to inadequate cattle testing and movement controls. Costing farmers and taxpayers dearly.
Badger Crowd has one message to Steve Reed and Daniel Zeichner –
You need toget a grip on your Department right now.
Defra has today (30th August 2024) announced plans for a refreshed bovine TB control badger strategy. Whilst it is good to see a clearly stated intention to stop culling badgers, that this will not happen before the end of the current parliament (2029) is completely unacceptable. These plans propose five more years of badger culling, all without sound scientific basis, and would result in the total number of culled badgers exceeding 300,000, all with no measurable disease benefit.
It is equally disappointing to see proposals for mass badger vaccination to be employed as a tool against bovine TB in cattle. This is an unwelcome, and scientifically unjustified continuation of the badger blame game. The scientific evidence just does not support the continued focus on badgers as a significant source of bovine TB in cattle, despite ill-informed media reports in recent weeks. It is a complete waste of resources when the real need is to retrain vets on the science of bovine TB and wildlife, over which they have been misled for many years, and to change cattle testing policy.
While we welcome the statement that “The full strategy will be co-designed with farmers, vets, scientists and conservationists”, we are somewhat sceptical about how inclusive this will be. There has been no engagement with scientists involved in important peer-reviewed science (here and here), despite frequent requests for meetings or at least dialogue. Will there be continued resistance to accept published science that challenges the views of those civil servants at Defra who have been pushing un-evidenced, expensive and unethical policy for so long? An uncomfortable history of bad decision making by those who need to stand aside to allow genuine progress.
Not mentioned in the statement, is the 22nd August consultation on licensing of a new badger cull in the Low Risk Area (LRA). It looks likely that Labour are not just re-authorising existing licences, they are planning to start new licences in new areas, this one in Cumbria in the Eden valley north and east of Penrith. This will have a 100% cull objective, repeating the failed epi-cull of the immediately adjoining area, the subject of a report last year (see here). There are rumours that two further LRA culls may be licenced this autumn or next, possibly in Lincolnshire and Hertfordshire / Bucks and who knows where else?
Here is the Defra announcement in full:
Government to end badger cull with new TB eradication strategy
First Bovine TB strategy in a decade to end badger cull and drive down TB rates to protect farmers livelihoods
New holistic approach will ramp up cattle control measures, wildlife monitoring and badger vaccinations
Proposals co-designed alongside farmers, vets, scientists, and conservationists to beat TB that devastates livestock farmers and wildlife
Work on a comprehensive new TB eradication strategy has been launched today (30 August) to end the badger cull and drive down Bovine Tuberculosis (TB) rates to save cattle and farmers’ livelihoods.
Over the past decade, TB has had a devastating impact on threatened British livestock and wildlife. Over 278,000 cattle have been compulsorily slaughtered and over 230,000 badgers have been killed in efforts to control the disease, costing taxpayers more than £100 million every year.
For the first time in over a decade, the Government will introduce a new bovine TB eradication strategy working with farmers, vets, scientists and conservationists to rapidly strengthen and deploy a range of disease control measures.
The new strategy will mark a significant step-change in approach to tackle this devastating disease, driving down TB rates and saving farmer livelihoods and businesses. It will use a data-led and scientific approach to end the badger cull by the end of this parliament.
The work to end the badger cull starts immediately and includes:
First badger population survey in over a decade: The last major badger survey was carried out between 2011-13, leaving policy makers with no clear idea of the impact culling techniques have on our badger populations. The Government will work at pace to launch a new survey this winter to estimate badger abundance and population recovery to illustrate the impact of widespread culling over the past decade.
New national wildlife surveillance programme: After a decade of culling, the prevalence of TB in remaining badger populations is largely unknown. The development of a new national wildlife surveillance programme will provide an up-to-date understanding of disease in badgers and other wildlife such as deer. Together with updated estimates of badger abundance, this will unlock a data-driven approach to inform how and where TB vaccines and other eradication measures are rapidly deployed to drive down TB rates and protect farmers’ livelihoods.
Establish a new Badger Vaccinator Field Force: Badger vaccinations create progressively healthier badger populations that are less susceptible to catching and transmitting TB. A new Badger Vaccinator Field Force will increase badger vaccination at pace to drive down TB rates and protect badgers.
Badger vaccination study: To supplement the Field Force, the Government will rapidly analyse the effect of badger vaccination on the incidence of TB in cattle to encourage farmers to take part and provide greater confidence that doing so will have a positive effect on their cattle.
In addition, we will accelerate work on the development of a cattle vaccine, whichis at the forefront of innovative solutions to help eradicate this disease. The next stage of field trials will commence in the coming months. Our aim is to deliver an effective cattle TB vaccination strategy within the next few years to accelerate progress towards achieving officially TB free (OTF) status for England.
The full strategy will be co-designed with farmers, vets, scientists and conservationists. It will consider a range of further measures including boosting cattle testing, reducing the spread of disease through cattle movements, and deploying badger vaccination on a wider, landscape scale. This will build on Professor Sir Charles Godfray’s 2018 independent strategy review.
Minister for Food Security and Rural Affairs, Daniel Zeichner said:
“Bovine tuberculosis has devastated British farmers and wildlife for far too long.
“It has placed dreadful hardship and stress on farmers who continue to suffer the loss of valued herds and has taken a terrible toll on our badger populations.
“No more. Our comprehensive TB eradication package will allow us to end the badger cull by the end of this parliament and stop the spread of this horrific disease.”
“Bovine tuberculosis is one of the most difficult and prolonged animal disease challenges we face, causing devastation for farming communities.
“There is no single way to combat it, and a refreshed strategy will continue to be led by the very best scientific and epidemiological evidence. With the disease on a downward trajectory, we are at a crucial point. Working in collaboration with government and stakeholders will be the only way we achieve our target to eradicate bovine tuberculosis in England by 2038.”
John Cross, chair of the bTB Partnership said:
“As chair of the bTB Partnership for England, I am delighted to hear Minister Zeichner’s intention to refresh the current bTB strategy. Ten years after its launch, the time is right to look again at the tools we use to tackle this persistent disease.
“Bovine TB is the common enemy, not farmers or wildlife groups. Only by working together, will we reach our goal.”
The government will also publish additional information about animal and herd-level bTB risk – for example, the date and type of the most recent TB test completed in the herd of origin of that animal and how long the animal has been in the herd.
This greater level of detail will be made available on ibTB – a free to access interactive map set up to help cattle farmers and their vets understand the level of bovine TB in their area and manage the risks when purchasing cattle.
Today’s announcement ensures the government meets its manifesto commitment and represents a new direction in defeating this disease that will both protect the farming community and preserve wildlife.
Notes to editors:
Existing cull processes will be honoured to ensure clarity for farmers involved in these culls whilst new measures can be rolled out and take effect.
The Bovine TB Partnership is a stakeholder-government collaboration established as a driving force for further progress towards disease eradication. It is made up of experts from government (Defra, APHA and Natural England), as well as farmers, veterinarians, scientists, academics, and ecologists/conservationists, including representatives from the National Farmers Union, British Veterinary Association, British Cattle Veterinary Association, and the National Trust.
Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) This email and any attachments is intended for the named recipient only. If you have received it in error you have no authority to use, disclose, store or copy any of its contents and you should destroy it and inform the sender. Whilst this email and associated attachments will have been checked for known viruses whilst within Defra systems we can accept no responsibility once it has left our systems. Communications on Defra’s computer systems may be monitored and/or recorded to secure the effective operation of the system and for other lawful purposes.
The ‘targeted’ badger culling proposals of the last Government are rejected by the new Labour Government but the ‘ineffective’ badger culls still continue, pending a further Review.
Lawyers acting for Secretary of State for Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) Steve Reed, have responded to ecologist Tom Langton’s Judicial Review Application [AC-2024-LON-002292] against a ‘future of badger culling’ Consultation (here) prepared by the previous administration. Specifically, the March 14th Consultation had proposed a new wave of ‘targeted‘ badger culling across England, killing many thousands of badgers each year, potentially until 2038.
The controversial proposals were promoted by the Chief Veterinary Officer Christine Middlemiss’s disputed beliefs that badgers play a central role in the spread of cattle TB, the science of which Langton, with other veterinary experts has challenged in recent years (here).
Defra have confirmed their decision not to proceed with proposals to introduce and license targeted culling across England. Defra had received multiple objections to the Consultation as well as support for proposals to better identify cattle disease risks that will still go forwards. The response indicates that the Secretary of State will instigate a fresh review of future bovine TB policy.
The welcome news signals a shift from previous policy but is bitter-sweet, with the news that a new badger cull area is being planned: Cumbria’s Eden valley South of Carlisle and to the east of Penrith under a Low Risk Area (LRA) policy licence. Communications have been sent to Tony Juniper at Natural England objecting to the consideration of any new LRA licence, on scientific grounds, but so far there has been no substantive response, with a failure to curtail culling licences that are ongoing from before the general election. It is expected that Natural England will reauthorize licences for over 20 intensive culling areas agreed under previous policy arrangements that many think should also be cancelled. These are in addition to those completing supplementary culls, meaning up to 20,000 badgers will be shot at night over the next twelve weeks with a percentage dying slowly from shot wounds in ways found cruel by a government appointed expert group in 2014.
Concerns remain that despite withdrawing the cull consultation proposals, the Defra’s response leaves some important question unanswered. This includes speculation in a heavily disputed recent Animal and Plant Health Agency report. Further, the Defra response to the economic aspects of culling states that the costs of badger culling may not outweigh the economic benefits, a point of interest in the Government spending rounds in the coming months.
Tom Langton said:
“This is a small but important step towards bringing forwards the abolition of badger culling forever. Labour has previously stated that culling is ineffective and now the Government has scrapped a Consultation that claimed culling worked. But it is shameful that the Labour administration is continuing the badger culls and expanding them in the Low Risk Area, contradicting its manifesto pledge, to appease a vocal minority based upon old scientific rhetoric and dogma.
Bovine tuberculosis is a disease of mammals needing expert measures that have been neglected for reasons demonstrated in the recent BBC documentary LINK charting the work of Brian May and the Save Me Trust with farms in England and Wales.
Badger culling must stop, but most of all a new testing regime for cattle is needed to give farmers the powers to use the right tests at the right time to beat TB in the herd where a hidden reservoir remains. Something that red tape presently prevents and at massive unnecessary cost to the taxpayer. It could be resolved in an afternoon with the right people around the table. I urge Defra to listen to us as they have promised and to meet with my team to help formulate new policy.”
Langton added;
Meanwhile, I would also very much like to thanks my legal team: Lisa Foster and Hannah Norman at Richard Buxton and Richard Turney and Ben Fullbrook at Landmark Chambers and with Dominic Woodfield from Bioscan as expert witness on the ecological impacts issues. And last but not least all of the Badger Trusts, Groups, Charities and generous individuals around Europe who have combined to form the Badger Crowd. With the specific aim of creating a voice for and to bring justice to the fight for truth surrounding badger culling. With a key role played in recent months by Protect the Wild, promoting awareness and fundraising.”
Further information
Defra’s decision was made on 23rd August, the date the BBC documentary of Brian May’s research was first screened (watch here), showing the inadequacies of the current cattle testing system.
The Defra response does not address the ecological impacts issues correctly and does not even seem to understand the challenge relating to protected species away from designated nature areas. Dominic Woodfield comments:
“Defra’s acknowledgement that the scientific, ethical and economic justifications for the extirpation of tens of thousands of badgers annually since 2013 have collapsed, is welcome but long overdue. It is tragic that it has needed the pressure of repeat litigation by Tom and others, the publication of competing science exposing the fallacy of blaming and slaughtering wildlife for a disease rooted in poor livestock management practices and failures of animal husbandry, and a change of the party in Government for them to finally concede the point.
Even now, Defra continue to disregard the wider ecosystem level effects of removing an apex predator from wide swathes of England – we may never now know what impacts this has had (and continues to have) on our native wildlife and declining species. Tom’s and others’ persistence in the face of obduracy, reliance on poor science and the making of decisions based on the political clout of those lobbying for the status quo, is extraordinary and commendable, but it is also fuelled by the long-held conviction that they were fundamentally right. There are a very small and diminishing number of hiding places left for those who’ve pinned their reputations and careers on badger culling as being a rational or effective answer to the bovine TB problem.
In life generally people crave the truth, learn from the truth and act on the truth. Truth is the universal source for learning, where trust develops, and where solutions to tackle the myriad of challenges that life throws at us are fostered.
Yet, we all know that absolute truth is a fickle thing. As time passes, new insights evolve, things change. Gradually we may find that what we thought we knew is conditional on certain things, right only some of the time, or even wrong for a clever reason.
So care is needed, especially with the big decisions where large amounts of money, time and effort are employed to address a particular issue or problem.
Take for example the culling of badgers. A Government expert [1] concluded 20 odd years ago that a very small trial study [2] suggested badgers might spread bTB to cattle, especially if frightened away from the setts where they live, and shooting them would help.
Sounds ridiculous? The entire livestock industry eradication policy in GB and Ireland has been based around ‘badger blame’ for the spread of Bovine tuberculosis among cattle herds for two decades. There has been over £2 Billion of subsequent spending and hundreds of thousands of badgers have been culled around a truth that is now uncomfortable to lose, because so many people have enthusiastically believed and embraced it. They own it, and accepting it is wrong messes badly with what they have said and done over the last 20 years.
The matter came into sharp focus in March of 2024, just weeks before the general election was called, with a Government Agency staff academic paper on badger culling effort [3] in England since 2013. This, followed shortly by a DEFRA Public Consultation [4] aimed at extending badger culling for a decade or more, over further huge areas, but with even fewer constraints on when, where and how.
To the general public this is all a mystery. Surveys show that the public largely think that badger culling ended in 2020 when Government said it was ‘phasing it out’, and the new government’s election manifesto view [5] that it has been ‘ineffective’ means it will stop for good. But actually, in the cold night air, from Cornwall to Cumbria, guns with silencers are steadily slaughtering tens of thousands of badgers each autumn. As harvest 2024 is concluding, the culling is now ramping up yet again.
So what about the truth? Well Steve Barclay MP, the old Defra Minister, one of the few seniors to keep his seat during the Labour landslide, had claimed in an ebullient foreword to the March consultation, that a 56% benefit has been gained after four years of culling badgers down to under 30% of their numbers.
So let’s unpack the truth in that. Firstly, the key time marker in all this is 2016 when the first of ten large cull areas were all up and running and followed by around 60 more at a starting rate of around ten a year. Unfortunately for unpicking science and truth, this was also the time that more intensive cattle testing began ramping up. So telling between the effect of culling and testing is not possible, despite what Barclay claimed.
‘Ah’, say the boffins at the Government Agency for badger culling. ‘But without killing badgers, the cattle tests wouldn’t work so well.’
At this point most people switch off….’ I dunno…suppose it’s possible…I’m not that interested actually….’ It’s one of those speculation moments that is only so interesting given that the facts and alternatives are beyond the non-specialist’s reach and require weeks of fact-checking. This is indeed a complex issue, even for interested parties to consider.
So where did Barclay’s view come from? Well, back in 2012 the coalition government encouraged an academic paper in 2013 [6] that was timed to support badger culling, and that printed its truth, as a part of the justification for mass badger culling. The paper said a few things that we now know were right and wrong thanks to good old Captain Hindsight.
Right, was that the old small study had been rendered meaningless by a horrendous Foot and Mouth disease outbreak in 2001 [7] that mucked up the experiment’s need for ‘stable countryside’ to be able to monitor change in three of the ten areas – enough to spoil the results. The hapless NFU encouraged rapid restocking with untested TB infected cattle, firing up the bTB epidemic.
Wrong were the calculations that rested upon a belief that cattle do not give bTB to badgers. It was thought to be TB moving all one-way, from badger to cattle, that Defra believed in those days, something that was always suspicious and that modern studies now show is wrong [8-11].
And questionable too was a theory, to try to make the numbers add up in a way no one has ever explained and that looks implausible. That theoretical infections going from badger to cattle are somehow passed on more rapidly than those originating from cattle. Baffling?
Lost already? Well to make the old small study work, the boffins believed that while around 94% of disease was the result of cattle-cattle infection, around 6% was down to badgers. Unfortunately, wildlife groups have believed and utilized these figures, despite warnings, not realising it is part of a dubious study that blames badgers and the king pin in justifying the badger culls since 2013. The so called ‘onward transfer’ of infection from badger to cattle is akin to a biblical myth with no scientific legs, yet it became the truth that key people in Government believed. It was held up as the science to believe in, forming and promoting the badger cull policy. Most cull objectors had realised this by 2016.
Back to Barclay’s 56% and the boffins new paper in March 2024. Despite elaborate graphics, this was a pretty rough-and-ready analysis, looking at before and after culling and substantial cattle testing improvements in the first few years of application, and attributing the decline in herd TB breakdowns to a combination of badger culling and herd testing. It stated (twice) that it is not possible to say which factor caused the change. Yet in a discussion of the results it also said the results were consistent with effects of badger culling seen during the small study, and studies using the small studies assumptions, and this speculation found itself in the paper summary (abstract) at the front. This now gives an opportunity for apparent disease benefit to masquerade as fact or truth. Hence Barclay and the National Farmers Union ramped up the rhetoric on ‘Badger Culling Works’, and quoted the 56% benefit as a function of badger culling. Not bTB control – the better description of the mix of things being tried. Without evidence. Sunak picked up the mantle and did the same in a shed with farmers shortly before he lost office at the general election.
But the truth, as pointed out by other senior academics observing, is that these public statements were untruthful. Change might or might not have been assisted by badger culling – the very question the small RBCT study 20 odd years ago was supposed to resolve when it came up with a split answer – it possibly does and it possibly doesn’t. Flip a coin. And the real truth is that badger culling could be having some effect or it might all be down to tougher testing and movement control. Saying badger culling helped from 2013 or was pivotal or a catalyst is a bit like any of the innumerable causation arguments that created problems in science before they were recognized for what they were during the 1960’s [12]. Association is not the same as causation. Would anyone propose that Donald Trump being elected as President in 2016 caused bovine TB to start to fall? Well it happened at the same time, and bTB has come down since………..Or was the fall in TB the result of a general switch to tougher testing?
The problem for truth in this case is that Governments need to make decisions, and where there is uncertainty they need to have a plan. But Government scientists presenting their opinions as fact, for politicians and stakeholders to believe and to repeat, is a deception. A dangerous step and something that needs weeding out by journals employing peer-reviewers. And hopefully not by mournful inquiries years later, charged with working out how it all went wrong. The problem here is that there are few people experienced enough to understand and judge boffin science, and so you find your mate reviewing your work, and you review your mates work, and bad habits develop. Bovine TB science is plentiful and this syndrome sees awkward material published quite often; it provides a good exemplar of the issue called the reproducibility crisis [13]. All the Government scientists need to say is we ‘think’ it might be working because…. that is a long way from saying it ‘is’ – think snake oil salesman. It matters, it matters a lot when lots of lives and money are at stake. It matters because lying to the public is undemocratic and wrong.
So if someone asks you about badger culling, you might just say – ‘well its complicated and I don’t know.‘ But if they pick up a gun to shoot a badger, you might just say ‘hang on – I think you might be breaking the law’. Which requires evidence, and sufficient clarity that mass killing badgers to prevent the spread of bovine TB can be justified. And after 20 years there is no truth to suggest it does, only guesswork. However, cattle testing and movement control has worked in England and Wales without badger culling, so using that proven remedy is justified with some confidence and is an honest approach, if truth be told.
References
1. King, D. 2007 Bovine tuberculosis in cattle and badgers. A report by the Chief Scientific Advisor, Sir David King, to the Secretary of State for Defra on 30 July 2007.
2. Donnelly, C. A. et al. Positive and negative effects of widespread badger culling on tuberculosis in cattle. Nature 439, 843–846 (2006).
3. Birch, C. P. D. et al. Difference in differences analysis evaluates the effects of the badger control policy on bovine tuberculosis in England. Sci Rep 14, 4849. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-54062-4 (2024).
4. DEFRA 2024 Bovine TB: Consultation on proposals to evolve badger control policy and introduce additional cattle measures. A consultation exercise contributing to the delivery of the government’s strategy for achieving bovine tuberculosis free status in England..
6. Donnelly, C. A. & Nouvellet, P. The contribution of badgers to confirmed tuberculosis in cattle in high-incidence areas in England. PLoS Curr. 10, 5 (2013).
7. Private Eye 2001 Special Report. Not The Foot And Mouth Report. London
8. Biek R, O’Hare A, Wright D, Mallon T, McCormick C, Orton RJ, McDowell S, Trewby H, Skuce RA, Kao RR. Whole genome sequencing reveals local transmission patterns of Mycobacterium bovis in sympatric cattle and badger populations. PLoS Pathog. 2012;8(11):e1003008. doi: 10.1371/journal.ppat.1003008. Epub 2012 Nov 29. PMID: 23209404; PMCID: PMC3510252.
9. Crispell J, Benton CH, Balaz D, De Maio N, Ahkmetova A, Allen A, et al. Combining genomics and epidemiology to analyse bi-directional transmission of Mycobacterium bovis in a multi-host system. Elife. 2019;8
10. Akhmetova, A; Guerrero, J; McAdam, P; Salvador, LC; Crispell, J; Lavery, J; Presho, E; Kao, RR; Biek, R; Menzies, F et al. 2021. Genomic epidemiology of Mycobacterium bovis infection in sympatric badger and cattle populations in Northern Ireland. bioRxiv 2021.03.12.435101; doi: https://doi. org/10.1101/2021.03.12.435101
11. van Tonder AJ, Thornton MJ, Conlan AJK, Jolley KA, Goolding L, Mitchell AP, Dale J, Palkopoulou E, Hogarth PJ, Hewinson RG, Wood JLN, Parkhill J. Inferring Mycobacterium bovis transmission between cattle and badgers using isolates from the Randomised Badger Culling Trial. PLoS Pathog. 2021 Nov 29;17(11):e1010075. doi: 10.1371/journal.ppat.1010075. PMID: 34843579; PMCID: PMC8659364.
12. Hill, Austin Bradford. “The Environment and Disease: Association or Causation?.” Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine 58 (1965): 295.
13. Baker, Monya, 2016, “1,500 Scientists Lift the Lid on Reproducibility”, Nature, 533(7604): 452–454. doi:10.1038/533452a
Brian May: The Badgers, the Farmers, and Me’ is a documentary that was aired on BBC2 at 9.00pm on Friday 23 August, and is now available on the BBC iplayer. Filmed over 4 years, the programme charts Brian May’s journey as he explores the ongoing battle against bovine tuberculosis, and the differing views of both farmers and those who oppose badger culling .
The new film covers 12 years of practical research ongoing over the last 12 years. The shocking truth around the monumental failure of Defra to effectively address the problem of bovine TB is highlighted, and the resulting tragic slaughter of both cows and badgers is revealed with horrible clarity.
Animal campaigner Brian May and Anne Brummer, CEO of May’s Save-Me organization, have spent the years since culling was first mooted by David Cameron’s government uncovering the truth about bovine TB. Rather than fighting the farmers, May and Brummer have looked at the problem from the viewpoint of the farmer and the vet , following a case study which has transformed a chronically infected cattle herd into a healthy herd with TB-free status. This was achieved without killing a single badger. The revolutionary methods used are now known as the Gatcombe strategy.
Meanwhile, over the same period, nearly a quarter of a million badgers have been killed on the basis that they spread bTB to cattle. This new documentary shows that the badger cull policy implemented since 2013 has failed farmers completely. Rates of bTB infection and consequent numbers of cattle slaughtered are in some areas no better, and in others worse than ever, following the cull. The work from the case study farm in the documentary clearly shows with that blaming badgers has been a wildly incorrect reading of the facts.
May and Brummer conclude that the very idea that badgers are part of the bTB re-infection process is unsupportable. Government and NFU policy has been based on the work of a small number of scientists who have persisted in claiming disease benefit from statistical models, ignoring the uncertainty around them, and doubling-down when challenged.
This new documentary is the first time that an alternative view about badger culling has been presented in documentary format. Do watch it for a sincere, refreshing and honest take on badger culling. It goes to the heart of the problem, and shows compassion for the farmers, the cattle and badgers. And it provides answers and a way forward. Congratulations to all involved.
On December 13th 2022, a preprint was put up on the ResearchSquare platform. Entitled ‘Absence of effects of widespread badger culling on tuberculosis in cattle’[1], it was a reanalysis of the Randomized Badger Culling Trials (RBCT). Following a protracted period of review, with a number of very long silences, and relatively few revisions, it was published in Nature Scientific Reports on July 15th 2024 (Torgerson et al 2024) [2]. Finding a major anomaly, it uses a range of statistical models to re-examine the RBCT data and concludes that most standard analytical options did not show any evidence to support an effect of badger culling on bovine TB in cattle.
Torgerson et al 2024 [2] noted that the statistical model selected for use in the original study in 2006 [5] was one of the few models that did show an effect from badger culling. However, various model assessment criteria suggest that the original model was not an optimal model compared to other options available. You can read a short blog on the new Torgerson et al paper here, and the full paper is available here. Essentially, the more appropriate models in the latest study strongly suggest that badger culling does not bring about the disease reduction reported.
Following publication, the new analysis [2] was mentioned in an article in Vet Times on July 24th, and in Vet Record in their 3/10 August edition. Neither publication noted its major significance. No other mainstream media reported on it at all. This is perhaps surprising since the government badger cull policy rests all but entirely on the conclusions from the RBCT. It is the science that DEFRA has used in court to defend their decisions to experiment with culling. It is the science that has resulted in 11 (12 including 2024) years of intensive and supplementary badger culling across huge areas of England, and around 230,000 dead badgers. In other words it is the pivotal piece of work for the decision-making around badger culling policy.
The reluctance of the media to report further on Torgerson et al. is a prelude to work by two of the authors of the original 2006 analysis (Christl Donnelly and Rosie Woodroffe) together with a DPhil Statistics student at Oxford University (Cathal Mills), who had, at the time of publication, two rebuttal papers in press with Royal Society Open Science [3,4]. Unusually, the abstracts and supplementary information for these new papers were posted online and available to view before publication without the main text. Enquiries regarding the posted information and the main papers resulted in in press versions being helpfully forwarded. The new analyses from Mills et al. are entitled An extensive re-evaluation of evidenceand analyses of the Randomised Badger Culling Trial (RBCT) I: Within proactive culling areas [3], and An extensive re-evaluation of evidence and analyses of the Randomised Badger Culling Trial II: In neighbouring areas [4].
Published on August 21st, the two new papers largely duplicate the analyses in Torgerson et al 2024, but use different model assessment criterion to come to a different conclusion. In fact they double-down on the conclusions of the original 2006 analysis: “…we estimate substantial beneficial effects of proactive culling within culling areas, consistent with separate, existing, peer-reviewed analyses of the RBCT data.”
So in the year and a half since the posting of the Torgerson pre-print [1], Mills, Woodroffe and Donnelly have been working on their rebuttal to it. Torgerson and his team have looked through the in press versions of the Mills et al (2024) publications [3,4] for a few days and multiple problems stand out. In particular:
Incorrect statements regarding disease control outcomes since 2010
Use of a non-peer reviewed publication
Confusion between the offset and overdispersion leading to incorrect calculation of disease exposure
Incorrect and confused statements regarding model comparisons
Exaggerated claims during use of new modelling.
Failure to address the modern interpretation of SICCT test reactors
Failure to recognise the onward effect of the analytical failure on multiple subsequent publications and policy outcomes.
Somewhat unusually, the new Mills et al papers do not refer to or cite the published Torgerson et al paper [2], only the first pre-printed version of Torgerson et al. from 2022 [1]. So in essence, the new Mills et al papers [3,4] are out of date at the time of publication, failing to refer to the updated 2023 preprint or the final version in Scientific Reports published 15th July 2024 [2]. Following contact with the Royal Society, a response raising concerns with the newly published papers is being written and will be submitted shortly. An interim report has been put together by Torgerson and Langton with brief observations on the new papers (see here).
The Royal Society says it is committed to reproducibility. Reproducibility is the ability of independent investigators to draw the same conclusions from an experiment by following the documentation shared by the original investigators [6]. The issues identified in [2] and “rebutted” in [3,4] illustrate one of the major issues of the reproducibility crisis: poor statistical inference. It is hoped that the conclusions of this exchange will inform future bovine TB intervention policy this autumn.
Things are starting to become slightly clearer as we near the point of discovery over the future of badger culling in England and beyond. Consultees to the online Defra Consultation questionnaire of 14th March were told this Monday (5th August) that an analysis of Consultation responses will be published in the autumn (Sept-Nov?) giving more time for policy development without badger culling. But there is no reason now to delay clarification on the big 56% lie surrounding the ineffective badger culls.
Notably, the NFU appeared fully taken in by the spin from the Animal and Plant Health Agency paper by Colin Birch and Defra, that badger culling ‘is working’. Birch et al. follows on from a paper published in Veterinary Record in 2022 that showed quite neatly how recorded bovine TB levels (recorded OTF-W incidence) peaked after the introduction of annual tuberculin testing in 2010 and began dropping in the High Risk Area from 2013 in some counties and generally by 2015. And, at a steady rate that did not increase once badger culling started (and that was more widespread from 2018), showing no evidence that badger culling had contributed to a slow decline of around 6% per year.
Steve Barclay, and previous Environment Ministers before him, had made wild claims of a culling benefit of around 50%, based on APHA parroting the claims made since the 1970s that this is the badger contribution to cattle TB. This has always been a poorly evidenced, lame and far-fetched claim, making a mockery of professional epidemiology.
Not to be fooled, Labour are onto the problem and have firmly labelled badger culling as ‘ineffective’ in their manifesto. They have highlighted the need to work with farmers and scientists which is now the helpful – but not very specific – new Defra mantra.
The Birch paper makes it quite clear in two places that the cause of the welcome decline in bTB first identified formally in 2022, cannot be attributed to any particular intervention, be it better testing, different tests and more frequent tests, better biosecurity or badger culling. It is just a crude before-and-after effort with no controls, showing what was already known in a slightly clunky way. This is no help at all, as Professor Macdonald at Oxford pointed out in his November 2023 ‘state of the science’ review. However, the unfortunately misleading abstract for the Birch paper transmutes opinion into ‘fact’, to give the casual reader a misinformed overview of the findings. How very CVO.
So what are we left with as we approach the time of Labour’s big reveal this month? Firstly, an increased interest in badger vaccination with Defra organising a media spree with its dutiful contractors to suggest a direction of travel that Natural England seem to think is appropriate.
Peter Brotherton, Director of Science at Natural England, issued his “Advice to Natural England’s Operations Team on Supplementary Badger Culling 2024” in April 2024, see here. It was released under Freedom of Information at the end of May.
So how is supplementary culling being justified?
Brotherton considers that the ‘key insights’ arising from his appraisal are that “disease reduction benefits to cattle achieved through badger culling are sustained in the long term (likely at least 7 years post-cull).” And what is this based on? Brotherton says:
“The most relevant evidence to the current English situation is from Donnelly (2013) who found from the Randomised Badger Control Trial (RBCT) that the disease reduction benefits from four years of intensive culling of badgers are greatest 1-2 years post-cull and are sustained for at least 7 years, albeit at a diminishing level over this period.”
Professor Paul Torgerson, Chair, Veterinary Epidemiology, University of Zurich
The problem for this justification now, is that Donnelly (2013) (an unpublished report) is overturned by the new peer-reviewed paper by Torgerson et al (2024). Published since Brotherton issued his advice, “Absence of effects of widespread badger culling on tuberculosis in cattle” has shown that the original RBCT analysis (Donnelly et al 2006) used an inappropriate calculation of rate, when face value calculation of rates was available. When rates are calculated in the standard way, no effect of culling was found. Many subsequent studies, like Donnelly & Nouvellet (2013) which recycle the approach of that analysis should now be considered unsafe. There are dozens, possibly hundreds of them.
Brotherton also references two small studies, Byrne et al 2014 (4 areas in Ireland) and Clifton-Hadley 1995 (2 areas in south-west England) which he acknowledges may be less relevant to the current English context. They are too small in scale to be able more than anecdotal or provide any certainty. They certainly should not be used as substantive evidence.
And that seems to be pretty much it in terms of published evidence. There is some speculation without evidence. There is a mention of badger vaccination reducing the prevalence of bTB in badgers, but any assumption of this reducing disease in cattle is not based on sound evidence. It should be noted that Natural England keep away from their ‘Uncertainty Standard’ that they previously reported as scrapped, but now seem to want to retain .. its all a bit uncertain at Natural England.
Notably, Brotherton does not refer to the main peer-reviewed and published badger culling analysis Langton et al (2022) in his ‘rationale’, presumably favouring the Chief Vets unqualified comments. This compared culled and unculled areas after 7 years of industry-led badger culling (2013-2019) and found no measurable benefit.
Also of note is Brotherton’s recollection of the advice of the previous Chief Scientific Advisor Prof. Boyd, who “stressed the limits in the evidence base and the importance of adjusting the policy as new evidence becomes available.“ There is no sign that the evidence of peer-reviewed Langton et al (2022) and Torgerson et al (2024) is being recognized by NE yet.
Badger Crowd understands that Natural England have received a letter requesting that supplementary badger cull licences should be revoked on the basis of new published science. It’s well past time to stop the badger cull immediately on the scientific evidence, and not least the comprehensive peer-reviewed evidence.
With all the changes in Government over the last month, it can be hard to keep track of the legal cases that are developing or underway to end badger culling. Badger Crowd has been supporting a case against the public consultation on bovine TB control by the departed Tory Government that began in March of this year, prior to the Labour landslide victory at the polls at the start of July.
The Consultation was founded on its ludicrous and unscientific headline claim of a 56% benefit from badger culling and aimed at handing sweeping powers to the Chief Veterinary Officer. This would enable her to declare Badger Cull Areas of equal or greater size to those designated for culls to-date, and to allow the numbers of badgers shot to be without limits over an extended time period each year, and to 2038 or beyond. Effectively, this would be a free hand for badgers to be shot across farmland, and to be tempted with bait to leave protected areas to be killed much as since 2013. The aim would be, as in the failed Cumbia pilot Low Risk Area cull, to also shoot healthy animals moving into the culled areas once the shooting starts, with some token vaccination of a few badgers afterwards for a few years.
Badger Crowd has helped stand up against these wanton plans, now poorly labelled ‘Targeted Culling’ and has helped crowd-fund to enable legal work to challenge multiple aspects of the Consultation that look deceptive, poorly evidenced and unlawful. A case was lodged at the High Court and DEFRA were due to respond by 29th July.
However, last week Badger Crowd learns that The Government Legal Department representing the new Secretary of State, Steve Reed, indicated that DEFRA would like a four-week extension of the deadline for filing, should it wish to, of what is called an Acknowledgement of Service, where the defendant makes their case clear. This would push their response towards the end of August. It was said that the new Labour Government may intend to take a different approach to that pursued by the previous Government and that there was need for more time to make proper decisions. Going ahead with a case now without clarity on the new government’s position on the Consultation might be contrary to all parties’ interests and the overriding objective of tackling the disease.
This seems sensible, to avoid significant waste of costs and of court time and resources, albeit that a clear mandate to end badger culling was set out in the Labour manifesto. Agreement to this request was made, in the hope of good decision making.
Equally we hope that ‘supplementary’ and ‘intensive’ culling is brought to an immediate end. With a new self-proclaimed anti-cull government in place, there are 48 cull areas remaining this year, 25 of which ending this year, with 23 ending next year. The contracts should have been ended by now. There is no real argument not to.
However, bringing an end to the tragic cycle of misinformation, financial waste, nature side effect impacts uncertainty and animal welfare issues of so-called Targeted Culling, is the basis of this current legal case. There will be a further news updates at the end of this month or before if things move faster. Its time now to listen to the science and stop the badger culls.
The ‘Comment’ submission to the Royal Society Open Science is an extensive response to the two new Mills et al. (2024) papers which reproduced much of Torgerson et al.’s models, whilst re-interpreting the results.
Hotspot 29
