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Will Defra advise Labour to U-turn and allow badger culling?

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Minister Angela Eagle

The Westminster Hall debate on badger culling last October, attended by Defra Minister Angela Eagle, gave the impression that under a Labour administration, badger culling was finally going to give way to badger vaccination. Intensive and supplementary badger killing licences finished at the end of January 2026, leaving just one Low Risk Area cull area in Cumbria which may or may not continue this year.

But a recent (28 February) lengthy feature article in Vet Record (VR) on BTB and wildlife, suggests otherwise. Quoting the Deputy Chief Veterinary Officer Ms Eleanor Brown extensively, a different future is being defined ahead of a new strategy consultation, scheduled for spring. In 2024 Defra Minister Daniel Zeichner promoted the concept of widespread and extensive badger vaccination at scale. Ms Brown is quoted saying ‘I don’t think badger vaccination is a like-for-like replacement on scale for culling.’

Last autumn, the ‘Godfray panel’ review update (2025) still insisted that badger intervention is necessary, and the evidence suggests APHA is now trying to get Labour to do both in equal measure. The article states: “Vet Record understands the possibility of allowing some small-scale ‘epidemiologically led’ culling may be kept open by the government as a contingency.’

So, far from being consigned to the history books, the so-called epi-culling (that resembles closely the scrapped ‘targeted culling’) is being rebranded  in an attempt to recover it as a policy option. Epi-culling, or targeted culling is very similar to Low Risk Area policy. This was invented in 2018 based upon Randomised Badger Culling Trial (RBCT) science, where the aim is to cull 100% of badgers in specific large areas around bTB ‘hotspots’, where cattle mismanagement has allowed disease spread. This has already been happening in Cumbria and Lincolnshire but without demonstrable benefit. A report on the extensive problems around this approach and its miserable inability to contribute to disease control in cattle is available here.

What happened to the extensive and widespread use of badger vaccination? It was never going to happen. It is far too expensive and difficult to implement and nobody wants it. The farmers don’t want it and the voluntary sector don’t want it, not least because it keeps a distracting finger of blame pointing at badger and wastes huge resources. The VR article says that Defra claims that there is ‘a significant body of scientific evidence‘ underpinning the use of badger vaccination as a tool to control bTB in both badgers and cattle. It points to a recent published essay by APHA that quotes many outdated studies. Whilst there is evidence to suggest badger vaccination can offer protection to badgers, there is no evidence that it can offer protection to cattle. Any such claims rely on the efficacy of badger culling, which despite claims to the contrary, remains uncertain at best.

The VR article mistakenly implies that the Birch et al. (2024) paper by APHA staff in Scientific Reports, concluded a 50% disease benefit from badger culling. The reality is that the authors published that they were unable to separate the effects of badger culling from the effects of additional cattle measures that were introduced concurrently. The Birch paper incorrectly reported that Gamma testing did not take place in the first two years of culling and omitted other vital factors (see here and here). Badger Crowd has written extensively about this (see here). Prof David Macdonald’s views on this can be read here.

Prof Roland Kao, who is Chair of Defra’s Science Advisory Council, is quoted in one of the least convincing and least decisive statements yet as saying “In some areas there’s really strong evidence of a lot of circulation of the bacteria  in the badger population, and that means they are probably likely to play a relatively big part in maintaining it there. But in other places thats probably not true.” He says “..what you need is an agile response” supporting or perhaps originating the apparent Defra change of direction.

The VR Feature is sadly an exemplar of introducing a discussion on the wrong premise, so that the views of the interviewees follow a chosen narrative to conclusion. Near the start it says “Few, if any, people with even a passing familiarity with evidence on bTB would deny that badgers can become infected with Mycobacterium bovis, the causative agent of bTB, and that there can be transmission from badgers to cattle, and vice versa, as well as within populations of each.”

Perhaps few people would deny that badgers can transmit bTB to cattle because it has been shown to be physically possible if you confine the two species together in a small building for months (Little et al 1982 ). But the point is that there is insufficient scientific evidence that badgers (or any other infected wild mammal for that matter) transmit bTB to cattle outdoors at a level to warrant intervention. Recently published science shows that badger culling did not have a measurable positive or negative effect on bTB breakdowns in cattle (see Torgerson et al 2024, Torgerson 2025 & Langton et al 2022).

Speculating, the VR Feature says “It is possible that evidence arising from this (badger vaccination)  non-lethal intervention (implemented because ‘culling is ineffective’) could end up suggesting that culling may have helped reduce bTB in cattle in some areas, but we must wait and see.”

Evidence from Freedom of Information responses shows that Defra will be looking to use data being generated by recent and new badger vaccination schemes to try to show some benefit from culling followed by vaccination, over vaccination alone. It seems that they intend to do this using ‘herd based’ data; i.e. data that only Defra have access to because of (false) interpretation of rules around farm privacy and an unwillingness to share. This will give it more opportunity for selective use of data without any external scrutiny.

Meanwhile, an eight year study in the Republic of Ireland recently published here, was unable to find any difference between disease levels in places with badger culling and vaccination, and places with culling or with no-culling. A cross border EU funded scheme recently announced (see here), is nevertheless planning a Test Vaccinate Scheme (TVR) which will once again be killing badgers in what is being called an experiment.

Consultation conundrum

Defra are in a difficult position. They face legal challenge if they try to impose a new strategy without asking for views. They had planned to do this, but no one would be happy with that. The failure to involve stakeholders in co-design of the refreshed policy is a major problem. Defra have had a strategy to involve only favoured individuals, and have kept away from even talking to independent academics and issue campaigners. This is a terrible look, a result of habit rather than common sense.

Defra also have to get it past a Minister who will instinctively be suspicious. Reynolds and Eagle may just disappear with Starmer if the May elections go badly in the revolving door of Defra leadership. Not yet up to speed on detail, the Minister may spot the lack of probity in Defra’s plan and not be so easily led as Zeichner. We will see.

If the Defra civil servants win, it might lead to not so much a “renewed policy” from Labour, just culling by a different name. Which will not go down well with the public ……

 

 

Playing Possum

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Surely Ireland is not serious about a Test Vaccinate Remove policy for badgers?

It is difficult to believe, but the vets of Dublin and Belfast now appear to be using far-fetched claims from New Zealand to justify a cross-border lethal badger intervention ‘experiment’. Using ‘joint Ireland funding’, a programme of ‘Test Vaccinate Remove’ (TVR) is to be implemented in an attempt to control bovine TB (bTB) in cattle in Ireland.  (See BBC media coverage here and here, Derry Journal here, ITV here, and RTE here).

It was well over a decade ago that Defra Minister Owen Paterson visited New Zealand to look at bTB control methods and came back determined that England should instigate a badger cull. This was despite huge differences between the two countries and species involved, and a lack of competent epidemiological study.

The claimed wildlife vectors in New Zealand included brushtail opossum, a non-native largely arboreal animal with completely different habitats and behaviour to badgers in England. The first problem was that NZ’s mass poisoning of possums can not eradicate the species, but it can and did inhumanely devastate many native species as collateral damage. The poison used, sodium fluoroacetate (known as 1080), is highly toxic to mammals and insects and other wildlife and its controversial use to reduce introduced non-native animals has persisted since the 1950’s.

The reality is that studies and reviews showed that bTB levels only fell in New Zealand once  effective cattle testing and movement control was adopted by farmers. While infected possums were found on farms, the transmissions routes from possum to cow, were potentially plausible, but unproven. Outbreaks were linked most strongly and not surprisingly to frequent trading of infected stock. As bTB in cattle was tackled, prevalence levels in possums fell, suggesting a spillover relationship had existed. It had been inadequate livestock management sustaining the disease all along.

In 2013, despite the huge uncertainty around the efficacy of an intensive badger cull, then Prime Minister David Cameron claimed that it was ‘the right thing to do’ in England. This expression seems to wheeled out by politicians when they want to implement a drastic policy for which there really isn’t enough evidence, but because they want it badly, they do it anyway.  

So the war against badgers began. Over decade later, more than a quarter of a million badgers have been killed. Despite their extensive staffing and data resources however, Defra have been unable to provide any credible or clear evidence that culling  has contributed to the reduction in levels of cattle herd TB incidence, or prevalence. Have they hidden evidence that it has not resulted in any benefit? Overall prevalence of bTB in cattle remains high and  targets have been missed. The 2038 eradication hopes have been all but abandoned on current trajectory. Those senior staff who facilitated culling, some of whom have now left, are still disinclined to talk about it.

Raising this false comparison with New Zealand once again is astonishing. The distorted history of the policy of possum control in NZ is again being used to justify a form of badger cull. The TVR ‘experiment’ is likely to progress to  full culling according to current design. There has been no reference to recent correction of the science (see here and here) that shows that badger culling has historically shown no statistically significant disease benefit to cattle. Spin doctors rather than the scientists have the loudest voice.

Why would they do this? Is it because those vets and vet researchers involved have for so long been telling a narrative about possums and badgers, that is now impossible for them to change direction? Go with the flow, collect your pension and disappear?  With the single major study of badger culling, the RBCT, now unable to credibly show any disease benefit from culling cattle,  surely the obvious thing to do  would be to reconsider with intense urgency the underperforming  cattle tests and movement controls?

Or is it just too embarrassing and costly in terms of stakeholder response to admit to the failed thinking has been the bedrock of Irish policy to-date? A large study published last week shows no benefits are visible in terms of reduced herd risk after 8 years of culling and vaccination in RoI. How much of a fail do you need before you realise you have been playing with wrong beliefs? Playing Possum may help you survive, but only for the moment. Plenty of work for the lawyers ahead.

Defra’s badger vaccination hopes: the mask slips

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How did we get here?
Guardian headline from 2020


Back in 2020, Defra were not pleased. Boris Johnson had forcibly overruled Defra Minister George Eustice to impose a gradual move from badger culling to badger vaccination (BV). Defra were not happy about this because their 2018 ‘Godfray’ review had stated, (in this case correctly), that badger vaccination had unknown efficacy in terms of reducing cattle TB. Industry had ‘no appetite’ for BV. Funds and training for experimentation with it at scale were ruled out, making implementation impossible.

Meanwhile, the National Farmers Union (NFU) and pro-cull lobbyists who heavily influence Defra, were happy to see tens of thousands of largely healthy badgers shot each autumn, and were in no mood to swap their guns for vaccine.

But there were no grounds for optimism that the bovine TB (bTB) policy was fully effective and sufficient. While bTB levels, as recorded by Defra’s increasingly wobbly headline measure ‘herd incidence rate’ 0TF-W (confirmed) were coming down with better testing, OTF-S (so-called ‘unconfirmed’) cases were slowly rising. Failure of the tuberculin skin test (SICCT) to sufficiently detect infected cows was becoming more and more obvious to anyone looking responsibly at the problem.

Low Risk Area (LRA) culling slips into the mix

In 2023, the Defra plan seemed to be to keep BV as a small ‘also ran’ badger intervention in a few locations, like it’s small Sussex ‘VESBA’ pilot study (see here). With the 2024 general election in view, Defra tried to side-step the BV plan to enable something called ‘targeted’ culling. This exploited a loophole that had been slipped into the 2020 policy. It allowed for the culling of badgers where APHA claimed assessment indicated ‘need’ (see here). This new culling sideline was built on the hopelessly speculative Low Risk Area (LRA) culling policy which blamed badgers for the spread of TB once it had been introduced via cattle to remoter areas. Clusters of new infections were termed ‘hotspots’. The new policy involved culling up to 100% of badgers in large core areas. It is not possible to demonstrate any disease benefit from such approaches, but this did not stop APHA and Natural England claiming that it was a success, on expectation alone. This was actually a policy with no scientific way to measure success, as a detailed technical review (that Defra and Natural England simply decided to ignore) pointed out (see here).

Chief Veterinary Officer ‘targeted culling’ plans rejected

To permit ‘targeted culling’, Defra and Natural England had to dump their ‘uncertainty’ standards, as again there was no certainty or even likelihood of efficacy. They rejected any dialogue over the issue. Instead a public consultation attempted to give the Chief Veterinary Officer sweeping powers to establish badger culling at will, and without referral.

The ‘cull at will’ endgame of the badger control policy ran into problems in May 2024 when Rishi Sunak called the general election early, and Labour exposed the badger culls as ‘ineffective’ in their manifesto. Unfortunately, Labour’s full grasp of the science and mechanics of the bovine TB and badgers issue was still hampered by two decades of entrenched thinking by Defra’s civil servants, including in and out of house vets and academics. These individuals must have been fearful of how two and a half decades of research, now looking tatty under close independent scrutiny (see here), had created a complex and flawed demonisation of badgers, and had heavily polarised stakeholders. The frittering of so many £ Billions without coherent results, plus stakeholder misery, might have to be accounted for one day too.

The July 2024 election brought both a hiatus and a degree of common sense to the situation, with targeted culling proposals scrapped, allowing Defra to kick the confused impasse into the long grass for a while. For appearances, Natural England dredged up yet more Heath-Robinson and selective scientific opinion to justify pulling out of culling a few years early. But they were quickly slapped down by Defra who prioritised giving farmer ‘certainty’ over science – intensive and supplementary culling continued. They also gave in to industry pressure to start a new LRA cull in Cumbria (see here) based on yet more  speculative guesswork. The unimpressive results of LRA culling were ignored. With hindsight (and some Ministerial insight, see Spectator article), it seems that a shady pre-election deal by Steve Reed with the NFU in 2023 was another reason for the continuation of the intensive and supplementary culls. Although unknown to NFU, it is likely that giving farmers their last couple of years of culling may have been a ‘softener’ to the ‘surprise’ announcement of on farm inheritance tax in October 2024.

2025 Policy review update adds to the confusion

New Minister Daniel Zeichner, unaware of the uncertainty and shifting science around the issue, reappointed the same bTB science panel chosen by Michael Gove to deliver the Conservative Defra agenda. Thus Prof Godfray was reappointed as panel chair, and Defra picked up the reigns again. The Godfray panel needed to massage their 2018 ‘don’t know’ view on BV efficacy into a new policy direction; they obliged in their 2025 review update, contradicting the clear lack of credible supporting evidence. After the election in 2024, and before the re-appointments, Defra had visibly signalled a BV policy direction, taking it as read that it could work. It took time and legal pressure for Defra to admit that the APHA’s ‘Birch’ paper could not link badger culling  2013-2020 to bTB OTF-W decline, reversing Defra’s embarrassing media spin. But Defra persisted with their vague 2020 assumption that BV could reduce disease in cattle, and this is the direction they were pointing.

On 30th August 2024, new Minister Daniel Zeichner promised a ‘strategy refresh’ – although large parts of the 2018 review were either already significantly obsolete or outdated. There would be a year of consultation with key ‘stakeholders’. It all sounded very fair.

But the dozens of people who were cherry picked to ‘co-design’ the refreshed strategy were very close to Defra and under their influence & control, or from industry. Across 2025, Defra paid external agencies to question these favoured representatives in stage-managed workshops, to help rubber stamp its vision of the future. The NGO wildlife sector were struggling to form a collective voice and to be heard. By the autumn they began to complain more visibly about being excluded from the consultation process. Only the Westminster Hall Debate in October 2024 created and promoted by Protect the Wild gave hope that an end to the madness of badger culling was both possible, and in fact was the pre-election promise to be honoured.

Keeping culling alive

Yet despite all this, Defra, were still unhappy. They were trying to keep the door to all badger interventions well and truly open. They placated the NFU with promises that it would be alright in the end, with agri-eyes beginning to shift towards Reform Party politics, and they maintained their scientific position on need for intervention.

The Godfray panel review update had predictably been encouraged to keep the need for all badger interventions alive, as both a face-saving exercise and Defra/NFU wish-list option. They also floated the vastly expensive Test Vaccinate Remove (TVR) option. TVR has uncertain outcomes and no proof of principle, but it kept  badger culling ‘on the table’ for pro-cullers. This is despite a recent report on a large scale study in Northern Ireland that could demonstrate no evidence of any clear bTB cattle benefit. The obliging Godfray panel provided Defra with the pathway to give the NFU what they might wish for; a TVR pilot in 2026 or 2027, testing the resolve of Labours political position.  

Meanwhile, Defra had organised a return to crudely estimating badger density in the winter of 2025, based on sett activity. Under FoI they claimed not to be estimating badger numbers. This gave them the appearance of being busy, taking the focus away from spending too much time on a stagnating policy, as disease control began to flatline. They also decided to push out on badger vaccination with a £1.4 Mn project in Cornwall. This involved paying the NFU to see if Cornish farmers might accept BV if told it might help reduce bTB in cattle, along the lines of the inconclusive VESBA Sussex badger vaccination project, where intensive use of gamma tests had shown some value.

In reply to a parliamentary question by Baroness Bennett on 30th July 2025, junior Minister Sue Hayman denied that the Cornish vaccination project would be assessed in terms of cattle disease efficacy, conflicting with what local farmers had been told and were saying to the press. It seemed a strange statement that may yet prove to be untrue. It seems that data generated by the project is likely to be added to APHA’s national BV research project (see below).

As 2025 ended, a freedom of information response revealed what Defra’s plan was all along. Defra had announced the allocation of around £20 Mn over 4-6 years to BV. This is not a huge amount given the mountain of work required (see here), with the cost per vaccinated badger estimated at nearly £800 once staffing, logistics and operational costs are taken into account.

A secret study uncovered

But what were Defra really up to? The clue was that APHA had started to use any and all recent data from BV to look for change in nearby TB herd breakdowns and compare it against places without BV.  Defra promoted media coverage of a ‘record increase’ in BV which meant very little as the numbers were still relatively tiny. There was no sign of any attempt to replace culling with BV. Why?

What Defra were pursuing was an in-house plan to try to justify the concept of BV. They were aware that their scientific basis for BV was as weak or weaker than it was for culling, and that government needed better evidence. A legal challenge on this issue was possible, either from NFU or the voluntary sector. Some of the APHA staff with past publications who were invested in claiming a need for badger interventions, cobbled together a narrative article about it. They were trying to argue a case for BV that the Godfray panel update could champion (see here).

This arrived just in time to be quoted by the ‘Godfray panel’, who also commissioned a further article using simulated data to try to suggest that badger culling after 2013 might not have been ineffective. This also supported a case that BV vaccination might not be wholly useless (see here). All looking a bit desperate.

Defra’s main plan now is to expand its farm-based badger vaccination analysis. They are going to compare farms/farm clusters in places where badger vaccination has been done since around 2020 (in Cumbria, Cheshire, Sussex, Cornwall and elsewhere) with those where no badger vaccination has been done. The aim is to try to create some science to show BV efficacy. The problem? Such an analysis will be confounded by its inability to control for important variables such as cattle movements and frequency and type of testing. It is all but impossible to undertake meaningful analysis in such circumstances; see APHAs previous efforts on badger culling here, here and here.

Defra have disclosed in recent weeks:

The analytical approach being developed by APHA involves quantifying exposure to badger vaccination at a herd level, rather than by looking at large contiguous areas, which was the approach taken for the Badger Control Policy.

Quantifying badger vaccination exposure at a herd level means that cattle herds potentially affected by disparate small scale badger vaccination programmes can then be combined in a single analysis.

The aim of the analysis is then to compare these cattle herds to those where vaccination did not take place, potentially controlling for the numerous other factors which may influence bTB risk.

This approach is challenging, but it is hoped that this can develop a statistical framework to estimate the effect of badger vaccination in the future. In addition to the approach detailed above, there may also be further analytical approaches that can be applied to larger contiguous badger areas which may become more common as the vaccination policy progresses.

Can APHA bTB science ever be trusted again?

Defra have again kept data secret, preventing external scrutiny. They may not have enough data from badger vaccination to-date, so might want to add information they will be collecting over  the next few years. Defra should know that at the herd level, analysis of proactive badger culling data from the RBCT showed no disease benefit. They are withholding any post-2013 herd level analysis from intensive badger culling, probably because it shows no effect.

One potential problem is that the data available is large enough to produce a range of results, according to how it is selected and handled. This is why it should be done openly according to a pre-planned analytical protocol, and not exclusively by those with interest in outputs that support previous beliefs and perceptions. This, as international experts are pointing out, is where everything has gone wrong in the past (see review history for Torgerson et al 2025, explained here).

Zoologists and statisticians who have produced work supporting badger interventions in the past, that have now been shown to be equivocal, should not be the only individuals involved in such work. So far Defra have suggested that decisions on such appointments may not be entirely in their hands, which is suspicious. Further information is being sought on these important points of principle.

Defra’s tendency to throw ‘all the tools in the box’ together at bovine TB, rather than the right tools, means that it is not possible to tell which intervention has had effect and which has not. There is a bigger problem in terms of learning and adapting, when the combination of tools is not working well enough. This is no way to proceed and those in charge badly need to overhaul to an ineffective system.

More unscientific publications?

As indicated above, industry may have made the study of BV a condition of them not opposing it. Keeping BV on a small localised scale could be a government strategy to simply wait for a future government to allow a return to intensive badger culling. After all, the Godfray panel claimed that culling was ‘likely’ to have had an effect, despite the lack of credible scientific evidence. Defra don’t seem to want this advertised because it undermines their old beliefs in the role of badgers in bTB, that are still being used to sustain culling in the Low Risk Area. Having trained farmers and veterinarians for decades to believe that badgers have driven the spread of disease, they have no appetite for admitting they were wrong and re-training them out of a bad habit.

Pretences and deceptions – will they continue?

Pretending that BV can have an effect on cattle TB without evidence is untenable. Having a review panel express their opinion in a way that contradicts that lack of evidence has been unhelpful. Are we really going to see a new chapter of misleading science coming out of Defra?

There are some bad signs. The strategy refresh consultation over last year ignored key scientific stakeholders and refused to consider advice outside its 2018 review update. This is despite that review containing multiple errors and misleading statements, only one of which has been corrected to-date.

Corrected model outputs from Silverman model


Is there no one in government with the moral compass to do the right thing and start again? Has the strategy been refreshed or is it simply being pushed further into the mire?

BTB control contradictions at the APHA

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In late November 2025 APHA published online their annual report on bTB for last year: “Bovine tuberculosis in England in 2024 Epidemiological analysis of the 2024 surveillance data and historical trends in cattle.” It is a disappointing read.

In 2023, APHA said:

“A new Disease Report Form (DRF), for recording cattle TB incident investigations, is under development. This aims to enhance data capture and review the methodology around how we assess source attribution to improve understanding of TB transmission pathways and the evidence base for biosecurity advice.”

But in their latest report, APHA are once again using the tired, outdated and discredited veterinary ‘risk pathways’ approach (see chapter 2 of this 2023 report.). It has still not been properly revised, and is being used again to speculate about the source of new infections. As a result, APHA continue to point ‘by default’ to badgers. They do this by ignoring the thousands of undisclosed infections from breakdown herds incorrectly declared bTB-Free each year due to the flawed testing regime that they have imposed on farmers for decades. These herds get rid of higher risk animals to other farms and at auction for years after they have been suspended following the identification of reactors. The APHA are very well aware of this.

This undetected disease in the herd continues to be overlooked for reasons that remain unclear. Perhaps one reason for the apparent intransigence to this overwhelming problem is that disruption to the industry supply-lines are limited, but the result is that the epidemic continues across England.

Let us remind ourselves that this ‘risk pathways’ system is based on a tick-based form that is completed by farm vets, who when invited to speculate on the likely origin of infection, and seem unable to link it to a previous cattle infection, possibly due to lack of information – just tick the box that blames badgers. No evidence required and the farmer is reassured it’s not their purchasing that has led to a breakdown. But……………..

Cattle testing is missing us to half of infected animals

  • It is now accepted that the standard SICCT test, at standard interpretation, has a low average sensitivity of around 50%, thus missing up to half of infected animals. Some would say lower.
Standard SICCT test, at standard interpretation, has a low average sensitivity of around 50%
Standard SICCT test, at standard interpretation, has a low average sensitivity of around 50%
  • Government’s external vet of choice, Cambridge University’s James Wood claimed on BBC Radio 4’s Farming Today earlier this year that: “The challenge is with this [testing] system, the controls are imperfect, so that when we clear a farm with TB we know that a proportion that maybe as high as 25 or 50%, a proportion will have one or two animals that are still likely to be infected.“
  • A study in Switzerland found suggested persistence of bovine TB in a dairy herd for nearly fifteen years without detection.
  • New studies have been testing bulk milk tanks on farms for bTB  antibodies using Enferplex testing (1,2) essentially doing a whole-farm bTB test in one go, indicating  that up to 40% of dairy herds have bTB infection.

Let’s blame badgers anyway

These shocking facts make a nonsense of the new APHA report and the ridiculous levels of badger transmission suggested. It is just so confused and contradictory. It states that  over half of new TB incidents occurring in 2024 in England, and nearly 60% of those in the HRA, were disclosed in herds that had experienced a TB incident in the preceding 3 years (recurrent herd incidents). These are herds that will be selling out infected surplus stock on a routine basis. Therefore, recurrent infection of cattle herds remains an important driver of the epidemic in these risk areas (Table1.1).

But at the same time it claims that the main risk pathway identified across all HRA counties during veterinary investigations was via potential exposure to infected badgers, which supposedly accounted for a weighted contribution of between 37.1% (Devon) and 67.2% (Shropshire).  So over half of new incidents are in herds that previously had TB (and this doesn’t account for disease from brought-in stock), but at the same time up to around one to two thirds are blamed on badgers. And it actually contends with pure guesswork, that “Recurrent herd incidents can occur due to a number of factors which includes residual infection, exposure to infected wildlife, poor biosecurity and high risk trading practices, amongst others” when it knows a large majority is infection breaking out again from within herds where it has been present all along.

This is veterinary nonsense and it just has to be queried who is in charge. Why do the APHA want to keep reporting such speculative claims? The most obvious reason is that bTB is totally beyond the current control system. Surely they cannot believe that it is anything other than the daily sale of inadequately tested stock that maintains the disease. Stock that in Wales, it is now unlawful to sell. Whatever happened to risk-based trading? Why does APHA hide the reality that newly OTF breakdown herd stock are massively risky?

And there is no acknowledgement of recently published science that shows that culling badgers during the Randomised Badger Culling Trials,(see here and here) and during the industry led culls (here) since 2013 cannot be shown to have resulted in any disease benefit. The central evidence for badgers being a significant source of infection is now absent. So why this continuing fixation with trying to blame badgers? Is the problem just too big for anyone to take responsibility? Why did they throw the most experienced cattle vet off the BTB partnership for exposing why the current testing system has failed in dairy herds?  

APHA are an organization that appear frozen in their capacity to change, despite the growing evidence of systems failure. This is a report for 2024 and there is nothing to suggest this year will be any different. APHA surround themselves with those who want to blame and kill or interfere with badgers, often it might seem just to hide their past oversights. When their badger policy since 2013 is an epidemiological mistake of epic proportions, heaping prolonged misery and suffering on cows, farmers and badgers at public expense and with no end in sight.

Additional References

(1) Hayton, A. (2025) Can Bulk Milk Revolutionise TB testing? A study to examine the contribution of bulk milk testing to bovine tuberculosis(bTB) surveillance and control in Great Britain. British cattle Veterinary Association Congress, Edinburgh 9-11 Oct. 2025.

(2) Hayton, A., Watson, E. and Banos, G. (2023), Bulk milk testing for bTB surveillance. Veterinary Record, 192: 85-85. https://doi.org/10.1002/vetr.2670

 

 

Low Risk Area (LRA) culling must be scrapped for good

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A Cumbria badger bloodbath

At the Westminster Hall Debate on the 13th October, Angela Eagle the Defra Minister of State confirmed that the badger cull would come to an end in February 2026 in all but one area. Cull Area no. 73, south of Carlisle, was initiated by Labour as a new cull zone last year (around what was called hotspot 29). It is large (183 sq km), and it can potentially run for up to five years (to 2029) with a 100% kill target, and some vaccination of any survivors. Voters have been incensed that despite Labours pledge to stop the culling that they described in their manifesto as ‘ineffective’, not only has it continued, but this new zone has been added..

So why oh why did Labour do this, when the two previous low risk area (LRA) culls have absolutely nothing at all to show in terms of bovine TB benefit for cattle herds? (See reports & addendum updates here). Pressure came from the local branch of the NFU who said  that they had been promised culling north of the initial cull area, Cumbria Area 32, that culled hundreds of badgers from 2018 (see more here). And APHA gave in, under Labour’s nose, with Natural England issuing licences to “maintain the confidence of the farming community”. Daniel Zeichner did nothing to stop it, before he was fired, after little more than a year in post.

And Natural England (NE) who issue the culling licenses, decided to ignore an independent expert report (left) showing why LRA culling is based on circumstantial information and assumptions; available data actually suggests that the cull will bring no disease benefit at all. This independent report was disregarded by both Natural England and the Godfray review, apparently because it showed an image of a process involved in badger culling, which illustrated the content of the report: a picture of a badger in a cage trap about to be shot (see below).

So the only detailed technical report by non-vested scientists was discounted because it showed a picture of the methodology being employed. This decision lacks impartiality, but it is consistent with the biased and selective use of science throughout the various government justifications provided for culling. Let’s not forget, Natural England were found in breach of their statutory duty in the High Court (2018) (see more here) for trying to hide the need to protect nature reserves from the potential effects of the mass removal of badgers. More recently, Natural England, most likely at Defra’s request, cynically tried to stop Wild Justice and Badger Trust taking a legal case against culling by asking the court to require them to pay more adverse costs if they lost. The court rightly told them they had no case and to go away. Such actions are a well known government tactic to cause delay, frustrate environmental justice and run up costs.

Basically, with Low Risk Area badger killing, cattle herds in LRA so-called ‘hotspots’ are blasted with extra cattle tests and movement controls to reduce TB, so the number of breakdowns starts to go down. Then, once bTB is going down, they move in to try to kill all the badgers and then to declare culling has worked, even though breakdown incidents continue at a similar rate.

It’s a travesty. Professor Charles Godfray’s review panel recently reported to Defra, calling it a ‘proof of principle’, when there is no proof of anything. Low Risk Area culling has been a failure:

  • Failure because APHA give farms within 3 km of breakdown farms a full 30 days to  move (get rid of) suspect stock before they are tested and/or restricted. Guaranteed to spread disease.
  • Failure because the core evidence behind badger culling policy 2013- 2025 is now redundant and riddled with statistical error.
  • Failure because data shows cattle gave strain 17z from Northern Ireland to Cumbria stock and then Cumbrian badgers, but there was never any evidence of badgers spreading it other than pure government speculation.
  • Failure because APHA tell Cumbrian vets to blame badgers if they are seen on a farm and not because cattle have been brought in from herds with a breakdown in the previous five years.
  • Failure because in Lincolnshire Area 54 there have only been a few breakdowns, yet over 500 badgers have been shot.
  • Failure because Natural England have kept making LRA cull areas bigger, so more and more badgers can be killed.
  • Failure because Godfray too ignored the evidence in front of him, to back up Low Risk Area culling for Defra.

Bovine TB control in Cumbria is failing

Last year saw a record number of TB breakdowns in the County of Cumbria with  a massive 39 breakdowns recorded for 2024

Area 32 – the first LRA cull in 2018 in Cumbria

Over 1000 badgers were killed between 2018 and 2021 in Area 32. During 2024 there was one B6-23 (strain 17z) breakdown (of NI origin) in northwest Cumbria. The B6-23 breakdown in 2022 just outside Area 32 has now been attributed by APHA to cattle movements. Cattle movements are being attributed where previously it was badgers getting the blame, but it is all ‘form-fiddling’. This saves face on making the Area 32 results look even more of a meaningless failure.

Area 73 – the new in 2024 cull area

It looks like the outdated and crumbling Animal and Plant Health Agency’s IT system (called SAM) is struggling. IbTB mapping is being updated less regularly and  has become a poorer online reference guide for disease control.  New breakdowns are being attributed to cattle movements here too, not badgers for some reason. A local shooting gang has been accused by local people of shooting cats as well as badgers and apparently wants to move to reactive culling. While behind the scenes, Labour is now apparently reported to be flagging to APHA to shut the whole thing down and not carry on for another two years as had been proposed under Daniel Zeichner’s short reign.

Area 54 – the Lincolnshire 2020-2024 cull area

Lincolnshire Area 54 Cull Area that began in 2020, and had hardly any TB breakdowns, has culled 523 badgers. Rather pathetically, they claim that the area is on track to be TB-Free in 2038 (whereas previously it had been predicted to be TB-Free by 2025); badger culling cannot be expected to contribute to this ambition in any shape or form.

2020         

139 shot

2021           

161 shot

2022              

80 shot

2023             

89 shot

2024             

54 shot

 

It is unclear if badger vaccination is being done in Lincolnshire Area 54, but in 2025 at least the shooting stopped. The end result? Many healthy badgers have been killed with nothing  to show for it. The area still has very few herds and breakdowns from the occasional unwise purchase of stock from the west.

It’s time for the wasteful, cruel and pointless Low Risk Area culls to stop for good and to acknowledge the flawed  science and evidence on which they were based.

Approaching 2,000 badgers have now been slaughtered in the Low Risk Area since 2018, due to reckless movement of high-disease risk stock, inadequate testing and negligent control rules. Labour has caried on against the public outcry. It must move to stop all badger culling in the Low Risk Area immediately and focus on the cattle measures that are known to work.

Government abandons RBCT as badger TB intervention evidence

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250,000 dead badger later……….and bovine TB is still rampant

A quick reminder of why the RBCT is so important

The Government’s English badger cull policy since 2013 has rested all but entirely on the RBCT analyses. It is the science that DEFRA has used to create policy and in court to defend their decisions to experiment with badger culling. The original RBCT conclusions claimed badger culling can reduce bovine TB cattle herd breakdowns; dozens of subsequent studies on which the policy hangs, are heavily derived from and dependent on it.

The ‘Godfray panel’ review of the science (published earlier 4th Sept. 2025) produce their own new re-analysis of the RBCT which claims to show a benefit from culling badgers, but at a much lower level of significance than previously presented – it is weak not strong. The panel then follows Defra’s shift from 2023, that the RBCT is no longer pivotal to the policy that badger interventions are necessary in the control of bovine TB. It claims that  it is ‘likely’ that other science shows that badgers are a sufficient disease risk to cattle to warrant intervention. More on this below.

Government scientists continue to infer that badger culling has caused a reduction in disease since 2013 when the badger cull policy was implemented, and in no small part  because this is what was “predicted” by the results of the RBCT. This is classic confirmation bias. So the correct interpretation of the results of the RBCT analysis remain hugely important to understanding the role of badger culling, or lack of it, in the control of bovine TB. Defra and now Godfray’s attempt to unlink it are strange, suspicious and somewhat unconvincing.

Below is a chronology of some key RBCT publications.

16th February 2006, “Positive and negative effects of widespread badger culling on tuberculosis in cattle” was published in Nature by Donnelly et al.

10th May 2019, “Badger Culling and Bovine TB in Cattle: A Re Evaluation of Proactive Culling Benefit in the Randomized Badger Culling Trial” was published in the Journal of Dairy and Veterinary Sciences by Tom Langton.

13th December 2022, First version of “Absence of effects of widespread badger culling on tuberculosis in cattle” was posted as a preprint on Research Square by Torgerson et al..

15th July 2024. “Absence of effects of widespread badger culling on tuberculosis in cattle” was published in Nature Scientific Reports by Torgerson et al.

21st August 2024. “An extensive re-evaluation of evidence and analyses of the Randomised Badger Culling Trial (RBCT) I: Within proactive culling areas”  and “An extensive re-evaluation of evidence and analyses of the Randomised Badger Culling Trial II: In neighbouring areas” were published in Royal Society Open Science by Mills et al..

16th September 2024. A ‘Comment’ response to the new Mills et al. 2024 papers was submitted to the Royal Society Open Science: “Randomised Badger Culling Trial lacks evidence for proactive badger culling effect on tuberculosis in cattle: comment on Mills et al. 2024, Parts I & II” by Torgerson et al.. This was pre-printed with bioRxiv on 20th September.

11th June 2025, ‘Comment’ response to the two new Mills et al. (2024) to the Royal Society Open Science was published: Randomised Badger Culling Trial—no effects of widespread badger culling on tuberculosis in cattle: comment on Mills, Woodroffe and Donnelly (2024a, 2024b),  by Paul Torgerson et al. (2025), was published by the Royal Society Open Science.

4th September 2025, Bovine TB strategy review update, Professor Sir Charles Godfray CBE FRS (Chair),Professor Glyn Hewinson CBE FLSW, Professor Sir Bernard Silverman FRS, Professor Michael Winter OBE, Professor James Wood OBE. This review contains  a new RBCT analysis by Bernard Silverman.

15th September 2025. “The Randomised Badger Culling Trial (1998-2005); proactive badger culling analyses were not weak, but invalid.” New pre-print by Professor Paul Torgerson. Version 2 posted 29th October 2025.

Natural England’s selective use of published and pre-printed work

Natural England’s rationale for licensing the supplementary badger culls in 2025 did not take the Torgerson et al 2024 preprint into consideration. This is despite considering un-peer reviewed reports, and preprints (notably Mills et al 2024) last year.

Their rationale for licensing the intensive culls in 2025 took into account a draft of the new Godfray review analysis, immediately favouring it over Torgerson et al 2024 and Torgerson et al 2025, (see more here). Notably they also took into account the new APHA (Robertson) pre-print which attempts to claim that Langton et al 2022 is ‘unlikely’ to have found an effect of culling, should one have existed.

Basic flaws and statistical problems with the new Godfray review

Complex statistics is difficult for the non-specialist to understand, and difficult to explain to other non-specialists. But it is important to convey the extent and gravity of the problems with this new Godfray/Silverman analysis. Here goes…….

  • Silverman has coded 4 binomial regression logit link models of the RBCT data.
  • He says that he has compared the results of the 4 models using AICc information criteria.
  • However, the output figures reported were for Bayesian Information Criteria (BIC), not AICc as they were labelled. This was corrected with an erratum on 16th September, with a claim that “the rest of the analysis and interpretation is unaffected”. This is not the case.
  • When the correct AICc figures are used, the values for models 3 & 4 (with & without badger culling) are all but the same – there is no real difference.
  • Further, as the Godfray group used a quasibinomial model for inference, it would be best practice to use QAICc selection criteria. Using this method, it is the model that does not include culling that has the best co-variate. I.e. culling has no effect.

In addition to the problems with the AICc/QUAICc model selection criteria, Silverman has not correctly adjusted for time at risk (exposure to disease) in his models. Time at risk varied from 2.72 to 6.73 years between areas studied, so this difference needs to be included in their models.  As Silverman has used binomial regression, to do this adjustment correctly, you need to have the complementary log-log function in the link (rather than the standard logit link that he used). When this is done, there is no effect of culling.

Silverman has also not dealt with the over-fitting issues of his models, something that was a feature of the Donnelly et al 2006 model. He has chosen to code the model to predict the time at risk, but the method for this creates a high number of variables relative to the number of data points, resulting in over-fitting of data, poor residuals and poor predictive power. In other words, he is using models that are not the most appropriate for the trial and data. Torgerson et al (2024 and 2025) show that the most appropriate models with the best model rating criteria show no effect of culling.

As Professor Mark Brewer pointed out in his review for the Royal Society of Torgerson et al 2025, ”work should be verifiable.” That is, if there really was a significant effect from badger culling in the data from the RBCT, it should be apparent in far more than one specially selected model and specially selected information criteria; it should be possible to verify it with a range of analyses.

As Professor Brewer also pointed out, “..in such a contentious area as this, it is naïve to imagine that a single analysis by a particular group of scientists should be seen as sufficient.” But that is essentially what has happened again; one group of scientists from Oxford University has been allowed to defend their legacy publications, and exclude scientific views that disagree with their own.

What science is left to support badger culling without the RBCT

Godfray refers to the 2024 Birch et al paper, incorrectly suggesting that it compared culled and unculled areas. In reality it was just a time series of data. The reduction in disease over the period of the cull cannot be attributed to badger culling. All disease measures implemented, including the introduction of extensive testing were analysed together with no control. There was no comparison of culled and unculled areas. In fact, the concurrent increase in SICCT testing and introduction of Gamma testing over the period of culling is greatly understated in Birch. See letter in Vet Record for more on this.

The Godfray report quotes two genomics papers to support the role of badgers in the transmission of bTB to cattle. There have been a number of genomic papers published in recent years on this issue, and they reach a range of conclusions. These papers are not definitive. They rely heavily on selective modelling, and many rely on the RBCT for data or inference. They are not evidence of significant disease risk from badgers, or that badger interventions would significantly reduce any disease risk.

Many other prominent scientific papers which have previously been used as evidence for badger culling have been invalidated by Torgerson et al 2024 and 2025 and now even by by the incorrect Godfray panel’s massive demotion of the statistical effect. Done properly the review should have gone back to its 2018 text and corrected it, to remove findings based on these now invalid studies.

The panel have relied on publications which have used flawed methods of analysis. It is important that these papers are now corrected, retracted or marked with expressions of concern in order that further work and funding is not mis-directed.

Most importantly of all, badger interventions designed at reducing TB in cattle must be stopped immediately. They remain wasteful, inhumane and indefensible.

Westminster Hall debate on ending Badger Culling, 13 October 2025

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The Westminster Hall debate of the Protect the Wild petition, held on 13th October, was a significant improvement on previous badger cull debates.  The majority of voices spoke earnestly about a wish to stop badger culling and address TB testing failures as soon as possible. There wasn’t a repeat of the nonsense we have previously seen;  “too many badgers” and “killing hedgehogs, bees and ground nesting birds”. And the Minister Angela Eagle concluded by committing to ending the badger cull by the end of this Parliament (2029), possibly hinting at terminating remaining licenses to bring all culling to a conclusion in 2026.

But the debate remained very much ‘behind the curve’. MP’s referenced scientific studies that have now been shown to have used implausible statistical methods (Brunton et al 2017 and Downs et al. 2019), or have implied inaccurate conclusions from government analyses (Birch et al. 2024). Several drew their facts from the latest “Bovine TB strategy review update” by the Godfray review panel, but as Badger Crowd has repeatedly pointed out, the scientists who worked on this document are largely the same scientists who have supported the now impugned previous work that claimed badger culling  could be effective. They are, quite naturally, strongly resistant to accepting that this view may be wrong; they are simply not independent, as claimed. MP’s are looking to the Godfray Review for inference, but they are not getting a balanced summary of recently corrected science.

The narrative being put out by some MP’s was that the scientific consensus remains that badgers give bTB to cattle at a rate that necessitates badger intervention. Others said it was all over exaggerated and the issue remains uncertain at best. With the results of the RBCT no longer able to support a benefit from badger culling, the implied transmission from badgers to cattle reverts to being an un-evidenced idea. DEFRA has been unable to show that the culls since 2013 have produced a disease benefit, although they claim that it is ‘likely’. This is presumably based on their own confirmation bias, based on out of date studies. They are hanging their hat on Whole Genome Sequencing (WGS) to keep blaming badgers, and Angela Eagle, reading the Defra script given to her, said that this could provide a definitive answer. However, with methods available at the moment, WGS is very much open to interpretation. It provides a range of outcomes that greatly vary and rely on a range of choices and decisions that are not always readily quantifiable and checkable. Often their inference is once again taken from the RBCT, that badgers are responsible for a significant amount of disease in cattle, but this is now unlikely or uncertain at best.

No MPs mentioned specifically the 2024 Torgerson et al reanalysis of the RBCT, or its subsequent defense from the original RBCT scientists (Torgerson et al 2025), which definitively show that the RBCT could show no disease benefit  from its results. The hastily put together RBCT analysis annexed at the end of the recent Godfray review claiming to show a smaller badger cull benefit at much lower level of significance has significant statistical problems, and is currently being investigated.

So while we are encouraged that the language and thrust of the WH debate is better than it has been previously, clearly the implications of recently published science have not yet filtered through to MP’s, and perhaps this will take a bit more time. The questionable briefing notes for the debate (generated from government documents)  are a clue as to why this is the case. The same civil servants who served the Conservative government with their strong ambitions to cull badgers are now serving a Labour government, who is aiming to stop culling badgers. But these are people who are invested in their previous views, with published scientific papers and reputations to protect. Do we have to wait for a wave of early retirements before we start to see the objective view of the science that the issue deserves?

Further evidence against the culling of healthy badgers

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A letter published last week in Vet Record (4/11 October) highlights further evidence against the culling of healthy badgers. The letter by Professor Paul Torgerson focuses on the recent scientific take-down of the supposed bovine TB ‘benefit’ from badger culling reported from the Randomised Badger Culling Trials (RBCT). He describes the subsequent attempt to rescue the purported positive effect of badger culling in the recently released “Bovine TB strategy review update” Godfray review. A new preprint (here) outlines the errors in the new statistical models produced. Professor Torgerson concludes that “Had the (original) analysis been done correctly in 2006 then it is almost certain there would have been no badger culling since 2013”.

Godfray Review 2025: Defra Revision? Correction? Or just further scientific howlers?

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On Friday 26th September, Defra changed the “Bovine TB strategy review update” but simply made things worse by adding another layer of confusion.

The correction of reported Information Criteria as now shown in the Godfray Review

An error was reported as “a revision to a line of code”. In the document itself, the change is referred to as a ‘cut and paste error.’ Red text in a box next to the correction (see above) suggests that ‘The rest of the analysis and interpretation is unaffected’.

The replacement red numbers, now show the  outputs from their 4 models described, but this time the difference between models 3 and 4 is insignificant. To put it in technical terms, a delta (difference) AICc of 0–2 suggests both models have similar support from the data.

However, far from the analysis and interpretation being unaffected as they suggest, the revision does have serious implications for the inferences drawn. The ‘update’ is actually a correction due to the wrong results being inserted into their models in Annex 4. The results reported as AICc (Akaike Information Criterion) were in fact the results from Baysian analysis (BIC) (which they did not report on).

However, BIC is not the correct IC for model selection, due to the small number of data points and large number of coefficients to estimate. The small sample size equivalent (was this really not tried?) would be appropriate (BICc), especially for logistic regression. Applying BICc favours a model which suggests that the incidence of herd breakdowns is independent of culling (i.e. culling produces no effect).

If AICc is used for model selection, a model suggesting a weak effect of culling is only slightly favoured, model 3: 173.58 vs model 4: 173.87. This difference is too small to draw any inference from; it is effectively a toss-up between the two models. The incorrectly reported IC results showed a bigger difference: model 3:151.58 vs model 4:159.38). It is this greater significant difference, which is what the peer-reviewers seem to have picked up on. Hence the big question, what were the peer reviewers sent? And given that one or both reviewer assumed the code was right, were they commenting on the wrong results?

Apparently Defra have been asked this all-important  question and an answer is pending. Maybe they don’t know and need to ask?  The answer could alter the Chapter 6 discussion hugely. A very large number of people are interested to find out who knew what and when.

The Information Criteria as originally presented in the Godfray review

One might pose the question “did the Godfray group try the small sample size BICc?” Given that they obviously tried BIC (as that is the output they incorrectly reported), the correct form of BIC would be the small sample size correction as there are only 20 data points. Interestingly, when BICc is applied, model 4 (without badger culling at 196.00) is favoured over model 3 (with badger culling at 200.96). I.e. badger culling has no effect.

However, notwithstanding all this incredible muddle,  it would have been more appropriate to select the most favourable model of a series of over-dispersed models, using the quasi version of AICc, which is QAICc, especially as the quasibinomial model was subsequently used for statistical inference.

When the QAICc is applied to their models, the results strongly favour a model which again suggests bTB incidence in cattle is independent of badger culling (i.e. culling produces no effect).

A pre-print outlining some of the problems with the new analysis is available here.

Reasonable people can disagree….

When dealing with the recent academic publications on the RBCT, (which have been reported on here), and which arrive at different conclusions, the Godfray review has stated at para 6.LXX:

“…reasonable people can disagree about the best way to analyse complex data such as these.”

That is an interesting response to the current differing views. A short article entitled “When Can Reasonable People Disagree?” is quite insightful on this. We borrow a couple of apposite quotes below:

“To say that “reasonable people can disagree” can encourage suspension of judgment in response to important matters of personal and social concern.”

“There is a related tendency to use the expression “reasonable people can disagree” to create an equivalence when it comes to conflicting beliefs that large groups of people hold. A common perception exists that if a large enough group of people believes something, it has met the litmus test for being a “reasonable’ belief and the people involved “reasonable people.” This is a familiar critical thinking error. The fact that a large group of people believes something does not provide us with a compelling reason for thinking it is true.”

“Respect for persons might require engaged listening. It might require careful consideration. It does not require treating weak evidence as if it is strong nor does it require treating unsound arguments as if they are sound. Far from being kind, we are actually doing one another an injustice when we engage one another as if all arguments are equally compelling.”

The point is, and it is a  point made by Prof mark Brewer earlier this year in his review of Torgerson et al 2025, it is more a question of can reasonable people agree?  And the answer to that appears to be not yet. But there  needs to be conversation. So far Defra has refused to have that conversation. Will that continue or does it have to wait until there is an inquiry into the crisis?

In any event, this muddle is so bad that the Godfray review will need to be rewritten. That is unavoidable now. The mistakes are too obvious, too profound and too important to remain as a part of the narrative.

While there is a ‘it doesn’t matter anyway’ type sentence to cover up any exposure, it is quite clear that it really does matter. The mistakes alter everything, including the economic forecast on badger culling benefit.  

Its time for Defra to change the way they do business.

 

 

Godfray BTB review update 2025: a failure to deliver.

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In December 2024, rather than have an independent review, Defra re-appointed some of its familiar advisors to update their 2018 Bovine TB Strategy Review.  To consider “new evidence or analysis” published since 2018 that affects the recommendations made seven years ago.  The reported aim was to assist work on a new bovine TB (bTB) strategy for England for the spring of 2026. The DEFRA panel was mandated to:

  • review evidence and analysis published since 2018
  • look for improvements on BTB interventions set out in their 2018 Review
  • advise on gaps in the available evidence and disease control tools.

The authors were charged with producing these outputs as three chapters. But the result looks more like an effort to refresh old beliefs and hopes, aiming to keep the little acted-upon 2018 document afloat. The new report says it should be read alongside the 2018 review, but that is hard, with what is now overlapping groups of ideas across two documents. No one seems to have asked if the 2018 review was actually worth building upon or if perhaps ordering it in a more effective way was in order, so as to better the 2018 review.

In the report, the authors have looked selectively at the science, but not discussed its merits in any depth. Instead they have used their preferred  thoughts and policy suggestions, and much ‘hunch’ opinion comes through. And rather than accept peer-reviewed published science on the RBCT that they don’t like, they have done some of their own analyses – as posted earlier (here). These analyses are selective and lack scientific rigour. They then finesse the muddle by saying any demise of the RBCT  does not really matter anyway. So why did they go to all the effort of the unsuccessful rescue effort then? 

The overall impression is of a report trying to help Defra to ‘carry on regardless’, with failing measures and with a few changes here and there, rather than looking forward with clear fresh direction and determination, as the exercise required. After all, the 2018 recommendations were largely, either rejected, not adopted, adopted in part or merely paid lip service to. The result has been a failure to reach the 2025 mid-point policy targets. 

The fact that Daniel Zeichner (now fired and  replaced as Minister of State by Angela Eagle, after only a little over a year), reappointed largely the same conflicted group of individuals from 2018, may relate to him coming into the job with the wrong briefing on bovine TB.

Zeichner failed to recognize, and act on considerable issues within his struggling bTB department. A department  too embedded in the wrong moves, he was too slow to realise. Zeichner and DEFRA simply chose to dismiss early concerns over lack of impartiality in the Godfray re-appointments. A 50,000 strong petition calling for scrutiny of Oxford’s statistics, a six thousand strong petition and public demonstrations in Oxford about the lack of independence of panel members, some of whom held multiple conflicts of interest, made no difference to the Defra back-room advising the Minister. Academics most conflated in the scientific controversies at Oxford and Cambridge Universities would be ‘marking their own homework’ for Defra again, at taxpayer expense. 

Labour’s incoming policy emphasis last July was all about moving away from badger culling. But it did not let go of the Defra obsession to focus so highly on badgers, as their unproven significant vector.  This suggests that the usual suspects within DEFRA and APHA, by now captured and tribalised by industry interests saw that their best strategy was to play for time. It seems that their aim was to slow down policy change to phase out culling. They were perhaps keen not to risk the truth being made public, which might enable the NFU to reclaim huge costs spent on  killing badgers to no effect. Perhaps to play a waiting game in order to bring culling back in a few years time to satisfy strong industry beliefs, spawned by bad (Godfray) science. It is, after all, the measure that Defra has long ‘hung it hat’ on, as the key tool in its mythical tool box. The measure that Boris Johnson as Prime Minister took away from George Eustice back in 2020. The measure that originates largely from Oxford University getting the science wrong, time and time again. And now getting it wrong once more.

This outcome has been on the cards since Defra announced they had made the Godfray panel appointments earlier this year (see here). The panel included Professors Charles Godfray and Bernard Silverman from the University of Oxford, and Professor James Wood University of Cambridge. Godfray and Wood had major roles in supporting badger culling for Defra, and were unlikely to change their rewarded positions on the issue. Also on the panel was Professor Glyn Hewinson, who has spent a professional lifetime (now at Aberystwyth University) working to try to seek new testing methods, and Professor Michael Winter of the University of Exeter. Professor Christl Donnelly was recused from the panel, with prior concerns raised over RBCT badger cull policy statistics.   

The update report looks like it has been collated by Defra staff with major input from James Wood, with excessive detail on worries about cattle vaccination. With Bernard Silverman looking at Badger cull statistics. Use of a mix of numbers and roman numerals for paragraphs looks a bit clunky.

The report suggests that there is a ‘small chance’ of being TB-Free by 2038. Saying that it is ‘challenging but achievable’ is not so much a stretch as an impossibility, and Defra have confirmed they have no position on when TB Freedom will occur. 

Here the departure from reality looks a bit desperate, it shows a detachment from any  understanding of where the epidemic control crisis is truly positioned. Farmer representatives cannot possibly look at this document with anything other than grave concern and scepticism.

This ‘small chance’ of TB-Freedom in 2038, must be maddening to those at the ‘coal face’ who know that the disease control policy is failing and poor scientific advice is the major driver.  And it is not due to a lack of investment, but how finances have been managed that is at fault. The self-praise that TB Hub is ‘very good’ is revealing. It has long been a mouthpiece for dubious ideas and advice. 

Chapter 3: Surveillance and diagnostics in cattle.

After the introduction and background, the first topic chapter recognizes some of the more obvious and burgeoning issues with the current approaches that were underplayed in the 2018 review and are already published for anyone caring to look:

  • Mother to calf infections are important
  • That TB-Free status awarded on release from breakdown is often false, undisclosed residual infection is rife, and is driving the epidemic in cattle (and wildlife)
  • The low sensitivity of the SICCT test means it should be replaced with the SICT test, the test used successfully in other countries
  • Better testing will significantly contract the cattle industry due to the volume of infected animals that have been generated by the failed system since 2001
  • Ways to safely quarantine infected cattle for slaughter to prevent spread both to other cattle and wildlife and avoid industry contraction have not been determined
  • Data sharing is incoherent, despite £183 Million being spent to-date

Yet there is a nod to the work by Robert Reed and Dick Sibley and others at Gatcombe Farm in Devon, and elsewhere, as expounded in the ‘Brian May’ BBC Panorama documentary of 2024. The need to be able to use alternative tests is recognized, as is the use of tests without compulsory slaughter of reactors. This  opens the way for a more nuanced system. These avenues are mentioned but lost in a list of many other things without weighting or priority. The system to implement such measures is another story and could have been mapped out. Defra is stuck in ‘can’t afford it’ mode, but a report like this won’t help them.

The media headline announcement of the review update on 4th September was a warning that Covid-style control funding is needed – so perhaps a few hundred £Mn or £Bn per year? How likely is this in the current economic climate? How much is really needed and for what? Where is the cost-benefit analysis or doesn’t it look too good? Will the government simply look to pass on the problem to the next administration, as previous ones have done, or look to sort out the long running disaster? Other neglected animal health crises suggest ‘wait and see’ is the present strategy, so the reports vagaries might not have bothered Defra too much.

Chapter 4: The Disease in Cattle

Reading through all the uncertainties and caveats in this section, the reader is led to the conclusion that bTB cattle vaccination is unlikely work any better than it is working now any time soon, and that it might be undeliverable at scale. Some of the claims are un-evidenced and a DIVA test that works is the unconvincing ‘maybe’ of old. This could almost be interpreted as a recommendation to drop the whole thing and let those involved slip away, rather than invest yet more shiploads of funding. It is hard to see any excellence in this direction. 

Chapter 5: Cattle movements and Risk-based trading

Obviously linked to diagnostics, the general lack of cattle movement control monitoring and poor biosecurity offers bleak prospects. The problems are well known, but little is being done to improve them. Suggesting that only 25% of Low Risk Area infections are due to cattle movements implies continued denial and/or incompetence. The update fails to identify a credible and rapid way forward to stop what the EU call ‘the British national sport of moving cows around’. The links between biosecurity, risk-based trading, slaughter compensation and a potential insurance approach are further covered in Chapter 8. But until the basic elements of disease control are sorted out (moving diseased cattle infects the herds they are moved to), and the truth separated from the fiction, it is hard to see who is going to believe in, support and enforce any such extensive controls.

Chapter 6: The Disease in Wildlife

Here the authors are writing to defend a failing battle to promote badger interventions. Charles Godfray and James Wood are two of the academics who have pushed them as effective. Godfray via the original Randomised Badger Culling Trial RBCT experiment where he was a DEFRA audit contractor, and Wood being the post 2013 media cheerleader for culling “working” generally, and attacking those questioning biased government propaganda. Predictably they recommend that badger interventions are still necessary to control bTB in cattle. 

With Bernard Silverman replacing Christl Donnelly (both at Oxford University Statistics), the face-off between the Paul Torgerson and Donnelly camps over the RBCT analyses that has played out recently in the Royal Society Open Science journal comes to the fore (see here). The review finds in favour of Torgerson on statistical use of rate/count in the ‘battle of the models’, but Silverman has gone beyond his remit to review, and has actually done his own analysis, with code published as Annex 4. He attempts to ‘rescue’ the RBCT, albeit with low statistical significance.  However, having diminished the holy-grail RBCT study significance from strong to weak, he has used the wrong output data for his result. When his published model is followed properly, badger culling is shown to have no effect, (see pre-print here). Thus the Godfray report fully invalidates the RBCT – this may take a few weeks to sink in across academia. And of course with the Donnelly 2006 analysis relegated, the plethora of papers that reply on it and/or use the same analytical method fall with it. And there are a lot of them.

Silvermans substantial oversight unravels the arguments made in the rest of the chapter to try to justify the badger interventions since 2013. It is embarrassing for the authors to try to bury their past positions on this issue, and this is the reason so many people said they were unsuitable to undertake the review update. This surely cannot be lost on Defra who put them there. It undermines the whole report.

What else did they get wrong? Well for a start, the pre-printing of the ‘Robertson’ analysis (currently un-reviewed). This work was, one suspects, commissioned by Defra officials to try to discredit (see here and here) the 2022 study showing badger culling to be ineffective. Robertson was seconded to Natural England from APHA for some months to undertake the work. Badger Crowd understands that Godfray suggested that it be pre-printed to back up his unwavering view that badger culling has “worked”. This analysis using unqualified guesswork and simulated data has not moved on since it was shared by Natural England back in 2023. Requests for the code used in the work have been ignored. Badger Crowd understands that it has not been submitted to a journal, and it is not difficult to see why. More on this red herring will be revealed shortly.

Perhaps the largest deception of all is that the Godfray review update attempts to characterise the badger issue as one where key decisions are political not scientific, with progress hampered by unmovable positions by those with extreme views. This is a gross simplification. Hard-core protagonists or deniers have little or no hands-on involvement or power. It is the scientists who have got it wrong, and blaming politicians has come from overconfidence, and an apparent need now to blame others for a mess of their own creation, over nearly three decades.

This smokescreen report is an unsuccessful effort to excuse poor progress and to hide the academic mistakes on this issue over the last 25 years. Godfray and his Oxford colleagues are themselves implicated. The flaws and deceptions have the potential to damage Oxford University and Defra very badly, as Zeichner was warned in the spring. They will damage Labour as well, on whose watch the errors were constructed.  If they don’t recognize the scale of the problems immediately and involve a broader team of visibly independent scientists, nothing can change. What is needed is an independent inquiry along the lines recommended by Professor Mark Brewer, head of Biomathematics and Statistics Scotland, in June of this year. Unless that happens, the British cattle and dairy industries are doomed to years, if not decades, of more failure with taxpayers footing the growing bill. £Billions more wasted, decades of cruelty and misery for animals and farmers.

Trying to use genomics arguments to sustain badger interventions as a last ditch effort is fanciful, but that is the route that  Defra have taken. They may be preparing to use trap-side testing in the predictable back-route preparation for Test Vaccinate Remove (TVR). It is an effort to replay the very old record to ‘blame the badgers’ to ‘keep the farmers happy’. Who was it who first named the policy ‘lies, deceit and negligence?’ Surely this time the farmers are wiser?

In short, the Godfray reviews in 2018 and 2025 have simply failed to deliver when it comes to setting the scene for resolving the bovine TB crisis in England. Defra is set on a path that was presumably decided with the NFU once Labour took targeted culling away last August. There is practically no chance that central government will fund a Covid-style response to bTB when the science as presented is so incoherent. Maybe confusion and no change is the plan? There is important work to be done to get bovineTB under control, but there is no sound evidenced route to a TB free England in this review. Bring on an independent Inquiry.

2038 Bovine TB targets on the scrap heap, with details of failed policy increasingly exposed

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Why was the use of Gamma interfreon testing, alongside use of the tuberculin test (SICCT), under-declared in APHA’s central bovine TB control evaluation paper (Birch et al 2024) last year, and also in the newly published ‘Godfray’ report?

Gamma reactors by cull year 2009 – 2023

A letter published today 19th September, in Veterinary Record, details the amount of supplementary Gamma testing that was introduced in the High Risk and Edge Areas before and during the post 2013 mass badger culls. It shows how Gamma testing was under-emphasised in the Birch et al. analysis on the effect of the poorly labelled ‘Badger Control Policy’, (see here). Considerable disease benefit is being claimed for badger cull in its first two years and beyond, but is far more likely to simply be linked to the increase in cattle testing with Gamma, as recorded publicly by number of gamma test reactors found.

What this shows is that Defra knew well that Gamma could find undisclosed infection, no surprise as it has been used in other countries for decades. They used it to help lower the spread of disease, then purposefully eased off, as badger culling was phasing down in more recent years. Who, you have to ask, was controlling this behaviour? And why?

As Badger Crowd has pointed out before (see here), all disease measures implemented, including extensive testing, were analysed together, with no control areas. There was no comparison of culled and unculled areas as the recent Godfray Review very strangely mis-reported.

Data presented with the Vet Record letter shows how easing off of the use of Gamma testing to supplement SICCT testing in 2022 is likely to have hindered disease control. This reduction in Gamma was said to be due to lack of EU funding, but this was surely predictable. So why were farmers and the public not told that the strategy was being derailed? A freedom of information disclosure in April 2025 concerning the likelihood of
bTB freedom being achievable under present conditions of testing and cattle controls, produced the following response: ‘APHA has not yet produced models suitable for predicting whether TB eradication will be achieved in England by 2038, or when TB eradication will be achieved.’ The 25-year bTB eradication strategy published in 2014, with a 2038 projected target of bTB freedom (elimination or near elimination) now, on current trajectory, has an end point beyond 2060.

As has been pointed out many times before, there is an urgent need for the use of other immune-assay tests and phage testing to be authorised alongside SICCT and Gamma IFN-γ tests, and for farm vets to be provided with extensive new advice and guidance. With freedom to test bTB out from herds – this is mentioned in the Godfray report but it should have been front and centre.

The money raid on central government funds requested in the Godfray review would have been credible with a report triaging essential priorities. But instead, like the 2018 report, the 2025 report is muddled and incoherent. Progress, especially in England, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland simply will not materialise if Defra continue along his line.

References

Birch et al (2024)
Langton, Griffiths & Griffiths (2025)

 

Godfray ‘science’ report simply adds to the bovine TB chaos

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The long-awaited ‘Godfray’ report, a review of scientific evidence since 2018 concerning bovine TB in cattle, was published on 4th September. Commissioned by Defra, it is supposed to feed into a ‘comprehensive new bovine TB strategy’ that was announced in August 2024 by the incoming Labour government. It is the science that the new policy should be based on, so it is an important – and needs to be sound. More details will follow on the entirety of the report, but this is what was said about badgers and bovine TB

Chapter 6: The Disease in Wildlife focuses on badgers. The report does not deal head-on with the Royal Society Open Science pre-publication review by Prof Mark Brewer. This  claimed that models suggesting ‘badger culling works’ were ‘naïve at best’. Instead, a newcomer to the issue, statistician Prof Bernard Silverman (a colleague of Christl Donnelly at Oxford University) has tried to rescue the situation & restore statistical validity to show some positive disease benefit.

Silverman  presents a new set of models. He confirms (para. 65) in a massive ‘wake-up’ finding that a paper by  Prof Torgerson’s study group in June of this year did show that the key 2006 RBCT paper by Donnelly and others, in short, got the modelling wrong. This has massive implications for a wide number of papers that have used that paper’s calculations to build further models. It must cause a tsunami of scientific correction, or the retraction of dozens of publications that have been used to promote  badger culling over the last 20 years. This is potentially one of the biggest shake-up’s in biological science, for a generation. The ‘perturbation effect hypothesis’ evaporates, for example.

Instead of the huge significance claimed in 2006 for badger culling, Silverman has tried to produce a  model that ‘just about’ finds an effect from badger culling, providing ‘weaker evidence for a positive effect’.  But nevertheless, at first glance, it might save Oxford’s blushes. The problem is that he gets to this position in a manner that is both unconvincing, and incorrect.

Firstly, there has been a major howler. Not just from Silverman but the two peer-reviewers asked to check his models, and Defra officials who supervised the process. Annex 4 of the Godfray report outlines the binomial model he has used, but gives the wrong information criteria (ic) outputs. These are standard applications that test how well the model fits the data. He claims to have used what is called Akaike, but instead presents Bayesian outputs. One assumes that this was not intentional, but rather a transcription error.

However, in addition to this, he has failed to address the fact that for binomial models with small sample sizes (the RBCT was an experiment with a small sample size – just ten paired comparisons), his binomal approach should have used a particular type of Akaike information criteria. When applied, results suggest that models showing a benefit from badger culling are those least supported. The best supported models are those that do not include badger culling, indicating badger culling had no effect. Even if he had decided that the Bayesian approach was the correct way to evaluate the models, the small sample size variant should have been used and this too makes badger culling the wrong model to favour from a statistical, hence scientific perspective. A pre-print outling the problems is available here.

So any ‘merit on both sides’ of the current modelling debate, the football equivalent of a score draw, does not apply as he had hoped. Torgerson’s analyses win handsomely on penalties and the RBCT is relegated.

For the benefit of stats geeks wanting to understand more, it is also fair to say that with Poisson regression, it is easy and quite natural (and now accepted by all), to include ‘time at risk’ in the model (as an offset), which is why Poisson regression would be the preferred method for the analysis. With binomial regression, to do this properly you need to have the complementary log-log function in the link. Again, when this is done, there is no effect of culling. Silverman has also not dealt with overfitting – there are too many parameters for the number of data points. He also fails to address the ‘all reactors’ argument that another chapter recommends needs ‘more research’. Could this be because finding in favour of using ‘all reactors’ would be yet another route to showing the data finds badger culling to have had no effect. Saving the RBCT is more important than admitting this essential pointer for cattle management?

The implications of a flawed report to the Minister are huge for Defra and Godfray, who chose Silverman to try to rescue the unsavable. It looks such a crude attempt that the new Minister (Zeichner has now gone) will have some difficult explaining to do. Do farmers get their money back for doing something pointless for the last 12 years, and do wildlife charities get compensation for rightly fighting, at huge cost, a scientifically botched policy? It’s going to be interesting. And if culling doesn’t work, neither will badger vaccination or TVR, which appears to be Defra’s new direction of choice. The second Godfray report could potentially be seen as a back-covering exercise to try to protect Oxford University, but it has not succeeded.

This is grounds for a major inquiry, with standards of scientific integrity and the impartiality of appointments under the spotlight. Badger culling would never have been sanctioned if the RBCT had got its statistics correct back in 2006.