Randomised Badger Culling Trial (RBCT) publications update

Posted on 13/06/2025 by The Badger Crowd

Following on from our blog of September 23^rd 2024, that reported on the uncertainties around the RBCT analyses, we are pleased to provide an important update. As Jane Dalton writes in The Independent, “Bombshell’ badger cull study review ‘disproves evidence’ used by governments to justify killings.”

A quick reminder of why the RBCT is so important

Government badger cull policy 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 RBCT claimed badger culling can reduce bovine TB in cattle; very many subsequent studies are heavily derived from it.

Disease benefits that have in recent years been ascribed to badger culling by civil servants and politicians are in reality, far more likely due to implementation of additional cattle measures that were put in place before or at the same time as culling. But Government scientists continue to infer that badger culling has caused a reduction in disease, simply because this is what was “predicted” by the results of the RBCT. its classic confirmation bias.

Below is a chronology of some key RBCT publications.

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

10^th 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.

13^th 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..

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

18th August 2024. Interim report on the August 2024 pre-publication response to the July 2024 re-evaluation of evidence and analyses of proactive culling (published in 2006), as a part of the Randomised Badger Culling Trial (RBCT), 1998-2005. Independent pre-publication report on the Mills et al. papers to be published on 21.08.2024.

21^st 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..

16^th 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.

11^th 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), Royal Society Open Science.

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

So although the peer reviewer (Prof M. Brewer, Director of Biomathematics and Statistics Scotland) of Torgerson et al (2025) favours this new evaluation, which concludes that “The justification for lethal control of badgers to date appears to have been based upon basic statistical oversight.”, it was not considered in the cull licensing for 2025. The peer review comments for the new Torgerson et al. Comment paper are available from the online link, and are well worth reading in full.

The justification for badger culling has been shown to be wrong in so many ways. Badger culling must stop immediately, on the basis of scientific evidence.

Badger Culling – where we are now

Posted on 11/06/2025 by The Badger Crowd

In August 2024, Defra announced plans for a ‘refreshed’ bovine TB control badger strategy (here). On 30^th January 2025, Defra issued Terms of Reference (here) for their ‘comprehensive new bovine TB review’, a look at ‘new’ science, which will inform their ‘refreshed’ strategy. This included details of the scientific panel which will be reviewing ‘new’ evidence that has become available since the last review was published in 2018. We have blogged briefly about this here. A new strategy would be the first since that presented in 2014, by Owen Paterson when he was Secretary of State (here). At that time, Patterson said:

“If we do not get on top of the disease we will see a continued increase in the number of herds affected, further geographical spread and a taxpayer bill over the next decade exceeding £1 billion.”

This is exactly what has happened, and what Steve Reed the new Secretary of State could be about to repeat. The outline for the preparation of a new strategy is brief:

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 to be co-designed alongside farmers, vets, scientists, and conservationists to beat TB that devastates livestock farmers and wildlife

While Badger Crowd welcomes talk of an ‘end to the badger cull’, the new strategy proposals indicate that this is not guaranteed before the end of the current parliament (2029). This is completely unacceptable. The strategy proposes five more years of badger culling, all without sound scientific basis, and if implemented would result in the total number of culled badgers heading beyond 250,000, with no measurable disease benefit at all.

Holistic measures to ramp up cattle control measures are welcome, along with wildlife monitoring, but proposals for mass badger vaccination to be employed against bovine TB in cattle are based on unscientific beliefs, uncertainty and guesswork, using methods trialed and rejected in Wales. They are a further betrayal of what was promised and what is urgently needed. They are a scientifically unjustified continuation of the badger blame game, and as misguided as culling in terms of cattle TB control.

The scientific evidence just does not support the continued focus on badgers as a 50% source of bovine TB in cattle, despite the last Government’s claims and ill-informed media reports. There are no ‘benefits to bank’. Yes, general on-farm hygiene improvements are sensible to prevent disease generally, but the real core need is to change the SICCT gold standard regulations, giving more control to farmers and vets to use a wider range of tests. Re-education of the sector on the science of bovine TB and wildlife, over which they have been misled for many years, is urgently needed.

Who could oppose the statement that “The full strategy will be co-designed with farmers, vets, scientists and conservationists”? But this has been said before, and implemented with secret committees and closed-door briefings, usually with those who are beholden to Defra for grants and favour. It is a breeding ground for vested interests and cover-ups.

Engagement with scientists involved in important peer-reviewed science that questions badger culling (here, here and here) has been prohibited by Defra for at least five years, despite frequent requests for meetings or at least dialogue. Will there be continued resistance to accept the published science that challenges the views of those civil servants at Defra who have been pushing expensive and unethical policy for so long based on decades-old equivocal evidence? There is an uncomfortable history of bad decision making by those who now need to move along, to allow genuine progress.

What does the immediate future of
badger culling look like?

Intensive & supplementary culling

The Labour manifesto in 2024 called badger culling ineffective. Sadly, since Labour’s election to power, Steve Reed (SoS for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (EFRA)), Sue Hayman (Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for EFRA), and Daniel Zeichner (Minister of State for Food Security and Rural Affairs) have all confirmed that the existing badger cull licences will be ‘honoured’ as they would have been under the previous Conservative administration. But where is the honour in doing the wrong thing? Culling will continue until January 2026. Leaked figures suggest that 10,769 mostly uninfected badger adults and cubs were killed in the 2024 supplementary, intensive and targeted culls to January 2025. How can a policy described by Labour as ineffective be implemented legally? There is no honour in retaining contracts that waste resources and distract from what really needs doing.

Targeted culling

On 14th March 2024, under the previous Conservative administration, Defra launched a five-week consultation on the next steps to ‘evolve’ what they call ‘badger control policy’. If implemented, this would have involved ‘targeted’ culling of badgers, seemingly at the discretion of the Chief Veterinary Officer. A general election and subsequent Labour victory meant that it was lawyers acting for Defra’s Secretary of State Steve Reed (and not the Conservatives Steve Barclay) that responded to a Judicial Review Application [AC-2024-LON-002292] against the ‘future of badger culling’ Consultation, as reported here. The ‘targeted’ badger culling proposals based upon Low Risk Area ‘hotspot’ (or epidemiological culling) were scrapped, although the new Labour government was unclear about its reasons. Effectively this decision provided the legal relief that the legal case sought (i.e. no targeted culling was implemented) and so it did not proceed to a hearing. As previously mentioned, the Secretary of State Daniel Zeichner has now instigated a fresh review of future bovine TB policy.

Low-Risk Area Culling

On the 22nd August 2024, a new consultation on licensing of a new badger cull in the Low Risk Area appeared online. So Labour did not just re-authorise existing licences, they are started new licences in new areas, this one in Cumbria in the Eden valley north and east of Penrith. This had a 100% cull objective, repeating the failed epi-cull of the immediately adjoining area, the subject of a report in 2023 (see here). This cull that was demonstrably the most ineffective cull of all, because badger killing began when cattle testing had cleared all herds in the area, beyond those chronically infected. Labour have revised their public presentation to say that all culling will finish by the end of this Parliament – by 2029.

Test, Vaccinate, Remove (TVR)?

The direction of travel of a recent trickle of papers published by government scientists suggests that the new Godfray review will switch from recommending badger vaccination experiments to TVR experiments, possibly while cranking up ‘hotspot’ culling (which is targeted culling with a different name) to keep the ‘old science’ going. Will there be, as in 2013, a ghastly pilot of the new policy that would provide DEFRA with what they need to keep the NFU and others happy with continued culling?

How did we get here?

The intensive badger culls have been in progress since the policy began in 2013, bringing the official total killed to May 2025, to around 240,000. Culled badgers have been predominantly healthy, killed on the premise of a hypothetical disease perturbation effect and supposed average 16% annual reduction in TB infections in cattle from culling, a concept designed by mostly Oxford academics that is now widely recognised as unsafe science, using unrealistic (and unexplained) extrapolation.

The February 2024 paper by Defra staff (Birch et al.) was being used to justify further culling in the March 2024 consultation, and falsely claimed that the culling programme thus far had been successful. With the Minister Steve Barclay stating “..bovine TB breakdowns in cattle are down by on average 56% after four years of culling..”. By sleight of presentation, he immediately muddles cause and effect. Authors of Birch twice acknowledge (on careful reading) that while they may speculate, the overall result cannot be attributed to badger culling: all disease measures implemented, including extensive testing, were analysed together with no control. There was no comparison of culled and unculled areas. It is far more likely to be cattle measures causing reduction in disease than badger culling, because decline began well before culling was rolled out. And in response to the introduction of annual SICCT testing in 2010 and short interval testing of infected herds. Birch et al also incorrectly under-reported the use of additional Gamma testing, which is a likely significant cause of disease decline. In truth, Birch cannot attribute benefit and provides no insight at all. Other cattle-based measures were also introduced alongside culling. So it’s been more a case of ‘Fake 56% News’ confirmation bias.

Writing in a preamble to Badger Trust’s report ‘Tackling Bovine TB Together’, key badger ecologist and original RBCT scientist Professor David MacDonald writes that the authors of Birch “… do not claim to have measured the consequences of badger culling, and indeed they have not”, and, “there is still no clearcut answer regarding the impact of this approach to badger culling on controlling bTB in cattle or, more broadly, whether it’s worth it.”

Badger culls have previously been justified using the guess-based ‘Risk Pathways’ approach of the Animal Plant and Health Agency (APHA) that purported to explain how disease arrives in a herd. Its ‘tick-based’ veterinary questionnaires implicated badgers as the default primary source of disease when adequate epidemiological information and investigation was lacking. Following publication of the report ‘A bovine TB policy conundrum in 2023‘ in April 2023, and with the speculative nature of their approach well exposed, APHA are now planning to use Whole Genome Sequencing (WGS) and a sample of dead badgers to try to justify culling on a local basis. These two methods of pinning blame on badgers fall desperately short however, as they do not prove an exact route or rate of transmission from badger to cow. Such a route may not even exist, or may be occasional or exceptional, occurring as a result of the constant infection of the countryside by infected cows. Badgers will just be getting bTB from cows, as with strain 17z in Cumbria, and rarely if ever giving it back. The proposed system for justifying badger-blame is still unscientific and unethical veterinary practice.

Why are APHA not checking back five or even ten years on moved stock to discover the improperly declared TB-Free source of new breakdowns? It would show them the true source of infection.

Refuting peer-reviewed science showing industry-led culling has shown no disease benefit

In their March consultation, Defra are at pains to continue to refute a study in the journal Veterinary Record (18 March 2022) by Tom Langton and veterinarians Mark Jones and Iain McGill. They do this on the basis of an un-peer reviewed letter published at the same time, which used incorrect data and made incorrect assertions about the methodology used, that was later corrected with some confused and unsubstantiated remarks. So where, 2 years later, is their measured alternative? Nowhere, because they can’t produce anything, even holding all the extensive data on individual farms in secret, as they do and always have. There are many ways they could test the data, so why don’t they? Or have they tested it but don’t like the results? There was no peer-reviewed rebuttal to Langton et al. under the old Conservative leadership with Defra refusing to meet and discuss. We have blogged about this sorry tale here and here and here.

Langton et al. 2022, was done in the most logical and clear-cut way using all the data. It shows what happens as unculled areas become culled, from 2013 onwards. The paper has two main findings. The first is really good news for farmers, cows and badgers. Data suggests that the cattle-based measures implemented from 2010, and particularly the introduction of the annual tuberculin skin (SICCT) test are responsible for the slowing, levelling, peaking and decrease in bovine TB in cattle in the High Risk Area (HRA) of England during the study period, all well before badger culling was rolled out in 2016.

The second finding came from looking at the amount of cattle bTB in large areas in the High Risk Area that had undergone a badger cull, and comparing it with the amount of disease in large areas in the High Risk Areas that had not had culling. It included a six year period 2013-2019, so before and after culling was rolled out. Multiple statistical models checked the data on herd breakdowns over time and failed to find any association between badger culling and either the incidence or prevalence of bovine TB in cattle herds. The models that most accurately fitted the data were those that did not include badger culling as a parameter, suggesting that factors other than culling (cattle testing) were more likely to be the cause of the reduction in disease in cattle. Badger culling efforts appear to be to no effect. A summary of this research is available to read on our 18 March 2022 blog here. You can read an open access copy of the full paper here. A three minute video illustrating the work is available to view here.

Badger culling outcomes were always uncertain

With no analysis able to show a disease benefit from industry-led badger culling, the analysis from the original Randomised Badger Culling Trial (RBCT) remains pivotal to any decision to cull badgers. Published in Nature Scientific Reports in July 2024, Torgerson et al (2024) challenges the certainty of this original analysis. Read more about this here.

Commenting on this work, Professor David MacDonald writes “They found that the conclusions of the 2006 analysis are sensitive to the method of analysis used. Indeed, the analytical approach that Torgerson’s team judge to be the most obvious for the purpose, provides no statistical evidence for a culling effect, whereas a model comparison method aimed at selecting a model with the best out-of-sample predictive power indicates that the best model does not include the treatment effect of killing badgers. According to those statistics, killing badgers during the RBCT made no difference to the herd breakdowns, whether measured by either OFT-W or by OFT-W + OFTS.” In other words, badger culling in the RBCT showed no measurable disease benefit using the most appropriate analyses. On this basis, all badger culling must stop immediately.

New response from original RBCT authors

On 21^st August 2024, and as a response to Torgerson et al 2024, two of the authors of the original analysis of the RBCT from 2006 (together with a third author) published two new papers in the Royal Society Open Science (here and here).

On 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—no effects of widespread badger culling on tuberculosis in cattle: comment on Mills, Woodroffe and Donnelly (2024a, 2024b). This was accepted for publication on April 23rd 2025 and published on 11 June. The new publication exposes the many flaws in the old RBCT analyses (Donnelly et al 2006 and Mills et al 2024a&b), and is endorsed by a senior biostatistician who describes work in Mills et al as “naive at best”. See more on this here.

The way forward

Rather than pushing for Test, Vaccinate & Remove (TVR) as seems to be the DEFRA & APHA current direction of travel (together with continued intensive, supplementary and low-risk culling), it is time to stop and implement the cattle-based measures that would finally get the disease under control.

Dick Sibley has shown why cattle measures are failing (see here). A BBC documentary screened on BBC2 at 9.00pm 23^rd August (and now available on BBC iplayer) does an excellent job of illustrating the problems of inaccurate cattle testing, and provides solutions – without culling badgers. Called ‘Brian May – the Badgers, the Farmers and Me’, it is a must see, and make the realities of the problem and current negligent approaches more visible.

It is time to stop living in the past and putting faith in unsubstantiated beliefs that controlling badgers can play a significant role in the control of the bovine TB epidemic.

Badger culls get go-ahead for 13th year

Posted on 03/06/2025 by The Badger Crowd

Natural England have confirmed that the nine (9) supplementary badger cull licences issued in 2024 have been authorized for their second and final year 2025, with culling running from 01 June to 31 January 2026.

This is despite Director of Science Dr Peter Brotherton’s concluding advice, that “Based on the evidence, I can find no justification for authorising further supplementary badger culls in 2024 for the purpose of preventing the spread of disease and recommend against doing so.”

He has, as in 2024, been overruled for reasons that will not be made clear for a few weeks, no doubt because if it is a re-run of 2024, the authorizations will also be added to the current legal challenge that our 2024 freedom of information response instigated. DEFRA are making it quite clear to enquirers that they are not involved in the decision making, which is a stretch, and details should come out in the legal papers when the case finally comes to court. Unless expedited however, few badgers could be saved due to the lengthy judicial process.

A further 11 areas may be authorized for the final year of four-year culling and the low risk area cull in Cumbria may enter its second year.

Is Test Vaccinate Remove (TVR) the new corrupted thinking?

Posted on 23/04/2025 by The Badger Crowd

Labour took over Government in July 2024, with a manifesto that announced an end to “ineffective” badger culling. But since then there has been little change in the perpetual failings of Government response to the scientific and policy issues.

Culling of largely healthy badger adults and cubs has continued in the High Risk Area of England and beyond; figures for the numbers killed under Labour rule in 2024 will be released in May and are likely to be around 15,000. Shamefully, a new area in Cumbria,in the Low Risk Area was licensed for 100% targeted culling, again with very few active bTB breakdowns, all of which were caused by infected cattle movements. A few hundred badgers will have been needlessly shot there so that Defra, APHA and Natural England can show the NFU that they are keeping the cull plates spinning.

The old Government plans for mass “targeted culling” across the UK which were at the consultation stage during the General Election were rightly scrapped, but they have been replaced by a stated aim to bring forward badger vaccination. Defra and APHA just won’t accept that badgers are not a significant part of the bovine TB problem in England, and move on to cattle based measures that would rapidly bring the disease under control. This is despite published peer-reviewed science that clearly shows how badger culling is based on uncertain science and that it cannot be shown to have reduced bTB in cattle.

Now a trickle of papers are being published that seem to reveal the policy direction DEFRA is pushing for adoption for England, and hence Wales and Northern Ireland. APHA staff seem to be scrupulously sticking to civil service tribal behaviours, ignoring published science that they do not like, continuing to try to frame “association” as “cause and effect”, and championing confirmation bias. With “Tuberculosis in found dead badgers at the edge of the expanding bovine tuberculosis epidemic”, the text “highlights the co-incidence of infection in badgers and cattle in parts of the southern edge area consistent with localised clustering of infection in both species.” But this is not surprising, and provides no insight into the direction of infection. Yet the farming press immediately put a spin on the work, saying it “provides new insight into the potential role of badgers in the transmission of TB, particularly in areas where the disease has not yet fully taken hold in cattle populations”. They continue “Badgers have long been implicated in the spread of TB to cattle, and this study suggests that they continue to play a role in areas near the edge of the disease’s established range.” Written to keep the badger blame flame alive.

Next we get “Can badger vaccination contribute to bovine TB control? A narrative review of the evidence”. Here we get the following bold statement in the abstract: “Modelling studies evaluating different strategies for controlling TB in badgers predict that badger vaccination will reduce TB prevalence in badger populations and lead to corresponding reductions in cattle herd disease incidence.” There may be some evidence that badger vaccination will reduce bTB prevalence in badgers, but there is no certainty that this will lead to corresponding reductions in cattle herd disease incidence. Yet Government scientists continue to try to groom the science world and the public into believing their partial interpretations of the science, and then fit them to their chosen policies. Policy driven evidence once again.

And a recently posted pre-print “Bovine tuberculosis model validation against a field study of badger vaccination with selective culling” introduces a sinister prospect. If you thought all forms of targeted culling were off the table, think again. Test, and Vaccinate or Remove (TVR) is now being discussed once more. (The TVR approach involves capturing live badgers, testing them for TB with an unreliable test, vaccinating those that test negative to the disease and killing those that test positive). Using data from the Irish ‘Four areas’ culling trials of the 1990’s and data from the Randomised Badger Culling Trials (RBCT), this paper is a claim for the efficacy of modelling in predicting culling outcomes. But the problems of such modelling remain the same; the quality of the data, the size of the samples, the appropriateness of the models used. And the problems of separating the effects of different variables also remain, as we have seen with the clumsy Government interpretation of APHA’s ‘Birch’ paper in 2024, brought out (unsuccessfully) to try to railroad ‘targeted’ culling through. Garbage in, garbage out.

None of the above publications or pre-prints have cited publications that demonstrate that the efficacy of badger culling is not evidenced. Meanwhile, the latest Government initiated review of ‘new’ science since 2018 continues in private, and is due to report by the end of June when it will be given to the hapless BTB Partnership. Commissioned by the government last year, most of the review panel scientist appointees have been closely associated or involved in Government science for many years, and have provided or supported the rationale on which intensive badger culling has been pursued since 2013. They rubber stamped it again at the last review. Can we expect an objective conclusion this time?

Government produced science on badgers and bovine TB within the UK is now completely lacking impartiality; it is unbalanced and mired in confirmation bias. Just read the first line of this Abstract (DAERA funded) in “Landscape as a Shared Space for Badgers and Cattle: Insights Into Indirect Contact and Bovine Tuberculosis Transmission Risk”; this paper is inference without evidence. Papers on badger vaccination and trap-side testing are becoming speculative narratives seeking to justify the past papers that the authors have been writing, sometimes for decades, believing that the ‘ground zero’ analyses and hypotheses were sound. With nowhere to go, they just keep digging. And dangerously claiming that TVR could help reduce bTB in cattle, even if half of the badgers killed are healthy false positives. It is more of the same old guesswork in play.

The direction of travel of this recent trickle of papers by government scientists suggests that the new Godfray review will switch from recommending badger vaccination experiments to TVR experiments, while cranking up ‘hotspot’ culling (which is targeted culling with a different name) to keep the ‘old science’ going. Presumably, as in 2013, there will be a ghastly pilot of the new policy that would provide DEFRA with what they need to keep the NFU and others happy with continued culling. Meanwhile, the public will continue to foot the bill for dirty cattle trading. And yet again Natural England get a stay of execution, safe from the recently announced review of ‘quangos for the chop’ by retaining their badger cull licensing function.

If Government, and Ministers during their short tenures, ever gets serious about making England TB free, they need to look to cattle-based solutions. The long held historic fixation with badgers is not borne out by credible science. They need to address cattle measures head on, rather than continuing to pretend they couldn’t rapidly stop bTB in its tracks if they wanted to, and save all those involved from massive cost, needless destruction and prolonged misery. Why won’t they do that?

If you support challenging the flawed science behind the badger cull and a parliamentary debate on the issue, please sign the petition linked below calling to “End the Badger cull and adopt other approaches to bovine TB control”:

Low Risk Area badger culling, yet again shown to be ineffective

Posted on 03/03/2025 by The Badger Crowd

Minister Daniel Zeichner must stop wasting taxpayers money and ruining farm livelihoods immediately

A new addendum update (here) to the dramatic 2023 expose (unheeded by the last Government), “A bovine tuberculosis policy conundrum in 2023” (here) has been released. It has been forwarded to Defra who say they are currently undertaking a review of scientific evidence since 2018. The results of the review will feed into their bovine TB strategy that they also say will be ‘refreshed’ at some point in the future – but when is not clear. It looks like there will be inadequate consultation (or no consultation) with contributing published scientists and nature conservationists.

Defra’s 2014 policy predicted that it would achieve ‘Officially TB Free’ status in the Low Risk Area (LRA) by 2025. Not only has this target not been met, but annual new herd incidents, incidence and prevalence have shown little change since 2014. Current data demonstrates little progress in LRA disease reduction over the past 11 years. Despite this, only weeks after Labour came into power, a new badger control cull licence was granted in Cumbria Area 73 within Hotspot 29. Throwing good money after bad, doing more useless, cruel badger killing and not seeing what is blindingly obvious – that the thinking and methods are completely wrong. So bad, for so long, and brutal to badgers, cows and farmers; the Defra ‘top team’ are wasting £Billions.

Cumbria: Area 32, Hotspot 21

In this hotspot, 100% badger culling and then vaccination of immigrants and survivors has been implemented since 2018. The graph and table below show bTB still persisting, with 4 ongoing incidents. To anyone who understands bTB control, this is an illustration of a complete failure to make progress; it shows that the earlier infections (orange) are persisting due to cattle movements/sales and inadequate testing approaches.

The current Cumbrian situation in general

The table below demonstrates how the county of Cumbria has shown no overall improvement in disease reduction since 2014. High numbers of OTF-S (Officially TB Free Suspended) herds remain, representing either new infections from traded cattle or recrudescence of disease that the SICCT and gamma tests have failed to identify.

Most incidents are disclosed by radial testing which is only instigated once an OTF-W incident is disclosed. This allows a 30 day delay, giving farms time to get rid of any ‘risky’ stock. The incidents disclosed by radial testing are at supposedly Officially Tb Free holdings undergoing 4-yearly testing. These farms could have been trading undetected diseased animals for up to 4 years or longer. When it was suggested to Defra (Personal comms. Ministerial Unit 6/11/2017) that annual testing in the LRA would be appropriate, the response stated: ‘Extending annual testing to all cattle herds in the LRA, which is on track to achieve TB free status by 2018, would significantly increase TB control costs for industry and the general taxpayer with only negligible disease control benefits.’ This approach has fallen on its face, with ‘TB Free’ status in Cumbria as far away as ever. The process has failed badly. The worst thing of all is that those in charge do not appear to recognise it, or are deliberately covering it up, which would be worse. Why on earth are farmers not taking action to stop this travesty? Will the Government now give farmers compensation for the impact of Defra’s flawed policy over the last ten years?

Lincolnshire Hotspot 23

This is the largest of all existing hotspots in the LRA, covering 1550km2. All herds within the hotspot have been subjected to annual whole herd testing since October 2020. Badger culling commenced in Area 54 (the LRA portion of HS23) in September 2020, the cull zone increasing to 122km2 in 2021. In 2023 a further 24km2 was added to the Lincolnshire portion of control area 54, despite it only having one herd (can you believe it?) in that whole area, and that herd was Officially TB Free.

‘

The data, illustrated above, shows minimal change in number of incidents in the Lincs Cull Area 45; badger culling has had no impact on TB levels in cattle. Enhanced cattle measures are likely to have reduced disease in cattle before badger culling began in 2020.

Low Risk Area in general

Throughout the UK, 45% cattle are traded by direct purchase between farms. The Low Risk Area covers approximately 50% of England, supporting a total of 18,268 herds. Cattle traded within the LRA between OTF farms are only subject to 4 yearly testing (with the exception of Lincolnshire), and do not require pre or post movement testing. Local trade is highly likely to increase the risk of spreading undetected disease within the LRA. The latest figures for which data are available show 637,239 movements within the LRA. As mentioned above, following an OTF-W incident, movement of cattle is permissible in a 30-day window before the introduction of radial testing. This hugely increases the risk of spreading disease to other areas.

Conclusions regarding Low Risk Area badger culling

Four-yearly testing with an imperfect test has resulted in self sustaining disease in cattle, enabling the development of hotspots in the LRA.

Budgetary constraints limit adequate cattle testing, which should be regular in and around breakdown herds and traded animals, including pre and post movement testing.

There is no evidence of disease benefit from the badger culling that has taken place from 2018 to September 2024 in the LRA.

Advice to Zeichner’s that LRA culling is necessary as a ‘last resort’ is both twisted and negligent.

Potential hotspots need to be identified earlier. At the moment they are not ‘declared’ without confirmation of a diseased badger, but this assumes badgers as having a role in the outbreak (without evidence), when official (Or unofficial) cattle movements are most obviously the cause.

BTB infection spreads between cattle herds in the LRA because:

Most LRA herds have only 4-yearly testing with an insufficiently sensitive test.
APHA allows trading of cattle in herds within a 3km radius of an OTF-W herd for 30 days after herd breakdown is notified, before radial testing is imposed. This practice provides opportunity for farmers to sell potentially high risk cattle.

APHA has made the mistake of assuming that a ‘new’ incident is an ‘index’ case, whereas the true source of disease is equally likely to be local farms with undetected disease. APHA is ineffectively ‘chasing’ disease, blaming badgers for infection while the bTB detection and control systems for cattle are wholly and quite obviously defective.

Daniel Zeichner must act immediately to stop what is going on in the LRA right now. There is not a day to lose. He must get a strong grip of the situation.

Please write to Daniel Zeichner and your MP asking for this crazy Low Risk Area badger culling madness to stop. Farmers are being badly treated and having their lives ruined by bad epidemiology from Defra. Its time to take a stand before the disease spreads even further in the north and east of England. Enough is enough.

The full ‘Addendum’ from which this summary is drawn is available here.

Cull review details announced

Posted on 05/02/2025 by The Badger Crowd

Government to review the last six years of bTB science for its ‘refreshed’ bovine TB strategy

On 30^th January 2025, Defra issued Terms of Reference (here) for the ‘comprehensive new bovine TB review’, that was announced last August. This included details of a scientific panel which will be reviewing ‘new’ evidence that has become available since the last review was published in 2018.

How objective will the new review be?

The panel, that last month began reviewing new evidence for the ‘refreshed’ bovine TB strategy, is largely a reprise of those who undertook the last review back in 2018, with one exception. The panel will be chaired, as previously, by Professor Sir Charles Godfray, University of Oxford. He will be familiar with the current scientific views of those whose work has been used to maintain badger culling for the last 12 years. He was personally involved in the statistical audit of the Randomised Badger Culling Trials (RBCT) (1998 – 2005), and so is extremely close to the discussion of issues relating to questionable statistical approaches raised since the last review.

As before, Godfray will be supported by Professor Glyn Hewinson CBE of Aberystwyth University, Professor Michael Winter OBE University of Exeter and Professor James Wood OBE of University of Cambridge. Wood has been vocal on TV and radio in his long-term support for Government publications that have suggested that badger culling might be working.

Professor Sir Bernard Silverman FRS, Emeritus Professor of Statistics at the University of Oxford University has stepped in to replace Christl Donnelly, Professor of Applied Statistics at Oxford University, who requested to be ‘recused’, for reasons that have not been stated, but may relate to recent scientific discussion over statistical elements of the RBCT. As one of the statistical auditors of the RBCT, Charles Godfray made recommendations in 2004 for tighter control of the data and analyses. Donnelly (et al.) statistics from the Randomised Badger Culling Trials (here) have been challenged in a new scientific paper by Torgerson et al. (here). And the debate has continued with Mills et al. (here) and (here) and Torgerson et al. (here). Whilst it is welcome that the ongoing dilemma will be reviewed, is the proper approach to have Oxford academics looking into an Oxford issue? Silverman describes himself on his CV as “Recognised as a world leader through ratings and awards. Wide experience within government, as chair or member of boards and committees and as a departmental chief scientific adviser, with specialist expertise in national security, modern slavery, official statistics, etc.”. Notably, he was on the panel of the Anderson Inquiry into the handling of the Foot and Mouth Epidemic in 2001, so has some experience of epidemiology.

The panel is expected to report their findings by the end June of 2025. Which is unfortunate for all the badgers that will be killed in the culls for which licences will be issued from June 1st (and September 1st) 2025. And for those that are victims of the escalating illegal culling that has been reported since ‘legal’ culling began.

One cannot help but think that if Labour had really wanted an objective review of the science around bovine TB and badger culling, they would have asked an independent set of scientists with less ‘skin in the game’, and perhaps more distanced from Oxford to undertake such a vital review. But once again it seems that it is largely the same set of academics who will be looking at the science in which they personally have a historical interest and potentially, future stake.

Defra have announced a £1.4 million badger vaccination project in Cornwall (here) suggesting that they may have already made their mind up on the science evidence; they are still treating badgers as a central issue in the control of bovine TB, despite the growing doubt. Yet they are still unable to provide any certainty that this is the case. Some are making robust claims about whole genome sequencing and what it can show, whilst others are modelling what they think might be happening using outdated assumptions and unproven associations. Meanwhile, the strongest evidence of inadequate control points to ineffective cattle testing being the crucial driver of bovine TB, and the solution must therefore lie with cattle controls.

Bovine TB roundup 2024

Posted on 20/12/2024 by The Badger Crowd

Everything changes but stays the same?

2024 has been a remarkable year, where it seems that better awareness of the bovine TB scandal is emerging. Yet institutional forces struggle to grapple with poor science, the embarrassment of failing policy and the need for decisive steps to overcome decades of oversight, dogma and vested interest.

In February, DEFRA’s Animal and Plant Agency (APHA) published a controversial paper (Birch et al.) in Scientific Reports that the DEFRA Minister Steve Barclay trumpeted immediately as showing that badger culling since 2013 was ‘working’ (see here). The journal and the authors refused to change a misleading abstract that implied this, despite the paper stating twice (on careful reading) that the observed overall reduction in bovine TB over the study period could not be attributed to badger culling. All disease measures implemented, including more frequent cattle testing, were analysed together with no control. Basically the analysis is just a time period study, as pointed out in Prof David Macdonald’s earlier comments on the draft paper (see here) for work already labelled as policy-led science (see here).

DEFRA’s tactics appeared to be to try to justify badger culling in order to reverse the ‘phasing out’ of badger culling by the 2020 ‘Next Steps’ policy. This was perhaps also addressing the High Court’s expectation, stated 5 years previously, that policy should ‘adapt and learn’ from the results of Supplementary Badger Culling. The DEFRA plan, as revealed on 14^th March, was to introduce something called ‘targeted culling‘ (see here), which was in reality a rebranding of epidemiological culling as carried out in the Low Risk Area (‘LRA Culling’) of England since 2018, including in Cumbria, south of Penrith. In this and a further cull area in Lincolnshire, culling of 100% of badgers in a core area and beyond was permitted over three or more years, with some badger vaccination afterwards. DEFRA refused to comment on a detailed report (here) documenting its epidemiological failings and its continuing clumsy approach to investigating sources of infection. Even now new breakdowns are happening in the Cumbria Area 32 due to unwise cattle trading and persistent infection.

The March 2024 DEFRA plan was to allow extensive culling into the future across England at the discretion of the Chief Veterinary Officer, potentially under a general licence, further negating provisions of the Protection of Badgers Act 1992. It looked like Defra were trying to put a policy in place before a General Election, to commence in autumn 2024. The DEFRA plan looked like a normalization of widespread badger culling into the future. Likely to further stimulate illegal badger culling that is now reported to be rife in some bovine TB areas.

Problems for Defra came from two important interventions. A prompt Freedom of Information request to determine Natural England’s reasons for continuing the licensing of Supplementary Badger Culling (extension from 4 to up to 9 years of culling) resulted in disclosure of their weak scientific justification (see here). Secondly, legal complaints that the five week consultation period was too short to evaluate the APHA paper and the government’s somewhat confusing interpretation of it, resulted on 19th April, in an extension by 3 weeks of the consultation period, to 13th May (see here).

A pre-action protocol letter for Judicial Review regarding the March proposals to ‘evolve the badger control policy’ was lodged on 16th May (see here). The legal challenge was to the consultation itself, arguing that it was :

Misleading and provided inadequate information regarding badger culling efficacy
Failed to provide information on potential ecological impacts of the policy
Lacked meaningful information on economic impacts of the policy

Ultimately, the consultation fell victim to the announcement by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on 22^nd May of a General Election on 4th July. This froze consideration of the consultation responses until after the election. The Labour Party manifesto for the 2024 General Election was published on 13^th June, and stated its intention to end “ineffective” badger culling, as previously pledged during the 2019 general election. Labour had been keeping very quiet about its position on culling in the months leading up to the election. Presumably this was a tactic to placate the farming vote which was needed before Reform UK Party decided to stand. It appeared to have agreed to keep some badger culling going as a part of a back-room deal with the NFU, a fix that was later exposed by reliable sources (see here).

Meanwhile in Wales, Deputy first Minister of Wales Huw Irranca-Davis in a statement in the Senedd on 14th May 2024 (see here) articulated the superior progress on bovine TB being made in Wales without badger culling:

“But just to be clear, from 2012, which is the year before badger control policy in England, to 2023, on the latest published data, the herd incidence in England decreased from 9.8 to 7.3; it was a 26 per cent decrease. In Wales, over the same period, herd incidence decreased from 10 to 6.8. It’s a 31.3 per cent decrease. I simply put that on record—those are Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs figures, by the way—to say that we are doing things differently in Wales, in line with our programme for government, but we’re also succeeding in many ways.”

Labour’s landslide victory on 4^th July heralded a further rollercoaster of events. Within six weeks it announced that the new government did not intend to pursue the policy of ‘targeted’ culling, making the key legal challenge to the consultation unnecessary. Instead it planned to work on a “refreshed bovine TB control badger strategy”.

An important new extensive re-evaluation of the Randomised Badger Culling Trial was published in Nature Scientific Reports by Prof Paul Torgerson with others, on 15^th July, shaking the foundation stone of Government policy since 2011. It provided further and highly extensive evidence that the role of badgers in bovine TB in cattle was fatally misconstrued, and the problems had not been spotted over 20 years ago (see here).

Throughout 2023 and 2024 the Oxfordshire Badger Group (OBG), with support from others, had tried to initiate discussion of the RBCT design and findings with Oxford University, but reported a wall of reluctance or silence. Around 7,000 badgers have been shot in Oxfordshire so far. On 18^th July OBG presented a petition with over 50,000 signatures to Oxford University School of Biology in central Oxford. OBG called on Oxford University to own what it called “Your Bloody Science” and asked them to “Speak out against badger extermination”, (see here). There was apparently no meaningful contribution to the debate from the Oxford RBCT scientists. Also in July, Betty Badger (AKA Mary Barton, a member of the Herts and Middlesex badger Group) marked her marathon 8 years of protesting badger culling outside Defra’s main London office (every Thursday), switching attention towards the broken promises made to her over the previous year that she “wouldn’t be standing there after the election” (see here).

On 21st August two new papers were published by Mills et al. in Royal Society Open Science, largely repeating the analyses in Torgerson et al 2024, but coming to a different conclusion (see here & here). Further concerns by Torgerson et al were preprinted on September 20th in BioRxive (see here) and the matter will continue into 2025.

On 23rd August, the BBC2 documentary ‘Brian May – The Badgers, the Farmers, and Me’ was aired, illustrating how the badger cull policy implemented since 2013 has failed farmers completely (see here).

There followed a tirade of rather ill-founded and rushed accusations and complaints by multiple members of the usually secretive BTB Partnership (see here) on X (formerly Twitter), presumably reflecting the collective tribal response of government hirelings. The documentary showed how, following the cull, rates of bTB infection and consequent numbers of cattle slaughtered are in some areas no better than they were in 2013, and in other areas they are worse than ever. See here and the graph below for Gloucestershire cull area 1 that is central to government (APHA) publications; they tell the story. The real culprit, as exposed by leading cattle vet Dick Sibley, is the limitations of the standard SICCT and Gamma testing procedure and constraints over using newer tests to detect the hidden disease reservoir in herds. The work from the Save Me Trust supported case study farms in England and Wales and all pointed in one direction – the misunderstanding of disease control needs by the Government professionals and contractors in charge. Farmers in south west England were beginning to recognize how far away from real solutions the Government and their representatives have been taking them. Both with the trading of herds not properly freed from bTB infection, and the false narrative around badger transmission. The documentary represents the most decisive moment in bovine TB control since the epidemic was created nearly 25 years ago following a long period with lax testing.

Fact: Badger culling has made no visible difference to the number of annual bTB incidents in the 2013-2021 ‘pilot’ cull area in Gloucestershire. Note 2024 has now reached 26 incidents as of 4th December.

On 30th August, intent to refresh the bovine TB control badger strategy was announced:

“Government to end badger cull with new TB eradication strategy”,

although only in relation to a bit of proposed tinkering around with badgers, as follows:

A new survey starting in December 2024 to try to estimate cull impacts. This will be a sample of signs of sett activity in culled areas and conclude generally that badgers are highly mobile and recolonise quickly, but give no reliable indication of numbers.
Surveillance of the prevalence of bTB in found dead or culled badgers and deer. To show, as expected, and previously shown, that bTB remains in wildlife when the general countryside remains infected by infected cattle trading, and afterwards for several years. This seems to be aimed at somehow informing further misguided culling and vaccination efforts, based on outmoded thinking.
Establish a new Badger Vaccinator Field Force: As Defra fall even further and hopelessly behind its badger vaccination targets of 2023 and now 2024, accelerating potential future costs, this ambition looks as futile as it is a pointless exercise. No one thinks it can work, no one wants to do it, no one wants to pay for it. There is no evidence it can contribute.
Badger vaccination study to rapidly analyse the effect of badger vaccination on the incidence of TB in cattle: There would be nothing rapid about this and for it to have any value would be a long term, hugely expensive exercise, with controls. The flawed anticipation is that it will “give farmers greater confidence that doing so will have a positive effect on their cattle.” This just illustrates how misguided and out of touch the same-old Defra/APHA staff and advisors remain.

This was very disappointing to say the least. And whilst there was a clearly stated intention to stop culling badgers, shockingly that would not now happen before the end of the current Parliament (2029), leaving the door open for culling to continue with the next Government. The plans proposed five more years of badger culling and to everyone’s disbelief, even a new cull area in Cumbria north of Penrith. Where unwise cattle trading has created a small number of breakdowns in a zone called Hotspot 29: around 1,000 mostly healthy badgers are to be shot over a wide area (see here and below), with hundreds shot this autumn. It was almost as if Defra/APHA staff wanted to appease the NFU with a “badger culling business as usual” promise no matter what independent reports or the new politicians said. Such is the grip of vested interest on civil servants.

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. There has been a further breakdown in December 2024 making 8 breakdowns.

And so in September, the badger culling season under a Labour administration got into full swing in the High Risk, Edge and Low Risk Areas of England for a 12^th year, to kill (often in a cruel way) around 15,000 more mostly completely healthy adult and cub badgers. This will bring the total reported killed since 2013 close to the 250,000 mark.

On 24th October APHA’s “Year End Descriptive Epidemiology Reports” for Bovine TB control were published online for the Edge Area counties of Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Cheshire, Derbyshire, East Sussex, Hampshire, Leicestershire, Northamptonshire, Nottinghamshire, Oxfordshire and Warwickshire. Progress is no longer on target for any of these areas, apparently due to inadequate funding for disease control following Brexit cutbacks (see here and here).

Published on 25^th October, Science and Politics, a book by by Ian Boyd appeared to try to distance the author (Defra Chief Scientific Advisor 2012-2019) from his pivotal role in convincing farmers that badgers needed to be culled (see Boyd’s conceptual model below). His role in encouraging the badger cull roll-out was exposed in court copies of internal Defra emails in 2016. This, despite his self-confession on Civil Service tribalism, having maneuvered in the ‘golden cage’ to deliver ‘Boyd’s cull’ (see here).

Ian Boyd’s Conceptual model on why badger culling is essential

As the year wound down, the Oxfordshire Badger Group supported a scientific seminar, in Oxford, delivered by Prof. Paul Torgerson on 18th November: key RBCT academics together with Defra & APHA officials were invited to discuss the science and statistics but all declined.

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (Natalie Bennett) hosted a special meeting on Government bovine TB policy at Millbank in Westminster on 19th November, with presentations by Prof Paul Torgerson and veterinarian Dick Sibley. The meeting was well attended from the Lords and Commons, but all Defra and APHA officials and staff invited to attend declined the invitation (see Vet Record: here).

On 28^th November, the Northern Ireland Chief Veterinary Officer Review of Bovine Tuberculosis in Northern Ireland (prepared by cattle breeder Brian Dooher) (see here) was published in advance of publication of a consultation document over policy expected in the spring. This followed the fiasco over the last consultation, where the economic case was not made available and the consultation was determined invalid by the courts thanks to a NI Badger Group/Wild Justice legal challenge. BTB is getting worse in NI and badger blame rhetoric has reached fever pitch, based in part on misuse of the February APHA paper, and DEFRA’s position claiming that badger culling can be shown to work. DAERA and independent advisors will need to be sure to produce an accurate document this time if the previous failure is not to be repeated, as sadly looks increasingly likely.

On 3rd December, Rob Pownall of Protect The Wild launched a parliamentary petition to end the English badger cull. Standing at around 30,000 signatures at the time of writing, the petition calls for “an immediate end to the cull and the implementation of cattle focused measures to control bTB, rather than what we see as scapegoating wildlife.” As the petition points out, research that has been “peer reviewed and published, shows no evidence that culling badgers reduces confirmed bTB in cattle. Over 230,000 badgers — many healthy — have been killed, disrupting ecosystems without solid scientific justification”. Please add your name to this petition here.

On 13th December Tom Langton delivered a presentation entitled “Veterinary Science, Uncertainty and Politics: TB and wildlife” at the Annual Veterinary Public Health Conference held at Vetsuisse Faculty at Zurich University. This looked at the flawed assumptions made back in the 1970’s that led to badgers being wrongly labelled as a ‘self-perpetuating bTB reservoir‘, on to field trials that tried to show a ‘bTB perturbation effect’, and statistics chosen to ‘prove‘ this as a way to stop culling. And the uncertainty, peer pressure, confirmation bias and reputational defence that has followed on as a consequence.

What can be expected in 2025? Difficult to say, but with a Labour government now in charge, we have to hope for at least some meaningful dialogue on the scientific, financial and ethical considerations that have just not been heard over the last 12 years. We are looking for more than the ‘same-old’ broken policy and tired old arguments.

Thanks again to the hundreds of active supporters who have generously helped to fund legal work and provided information, analysis and support in so many ways this year. You have surely contributed towards seeing off widespread targeted culling this year. Next year we will continue to demand rapid change in approach to bovine TB policy, a change that is scientifically evidenced, and that will, at last, start to benefit farmers, cows, badgers and the public. This change must start with meaningful dialogue.

Important New Parliamentary Petition

Posted on 29/11/2024 by The Badger Crowd

A new parliamentary petition has been launched by Protect the Wild. It states:

The Government’s TB Eradication Strategy allows the continued killing of badgers, a protected species, until the end of this Parliament, despite the Labour manifesto calling the cull “ineffective.”

We believe the badger cull is unjustified and must end.

Some research has suggested culling results in a reduction in bovine TB (bTB) in cattle. However, there are concerns about the methodology used. Other research, which has been peer reviewed and published, shows no evidence that culling badgers reduces confirmed bTB in cattle. Over 230,000 badgers — many healthy — have been killed, disrupting ecosystems without solid scientific justification.

We call for an immediate end to the cull and the implementation of cattle focused measures to control bTB, rather than what we see as scapegoating wildlife.

We fully support this petition and would encourage you to add your name. Encourage others who care about badgers, effective disease control and the correct interpretation of science to sign too. Let’s see it reach 100,000 signatures & get a parliamentary debate.

Add your name here.

APHA’s Edge Area Bovine TB Epidemiology Reports for 2023

Posted on 05/11/2024 by The Badger Crowd

How’s it going?

The quotes in the table below are taken from the APHA county epidemiology reports recently released. Progress is clearly not on target. As seen in Oxfordshire (see here), bTB in the Edge Area is not being addressed with sufficient resources or the right approaches. The lack of adequate testing is so glaringly obvious it is beyond belief that this situation is being allowed to continue. The bovine TB eradication policy is in tatters not just in the HRA and LRA but in the Edge Area too.

County	Progress	Going Well?
Berkshire	“Looking at the recent trend, the likelihood of achieving a herd prevalence of less than 1% OTF-W incidents in Berkshire by 2025 is low.”	No
Buckinghamshire	No prediction	?
Cheshire	“..the prevalence (4.4%) in 2023increased marginally compared to 2022. OTF county status will not be achieved by 2025,but with the use of all available tools to identify and to reduce the burden of infection, it might be possible to achieve OTF status by 2038.”	No
Derbyshire	“Based on current information, achieving OTF status is not conceivable for Derbyshire by 2025. Residual infection continues to be a problem in Derbyshire. The reasons for this are unclear, may be multi-factorial, and is likely to include herd type, wildlife populations, farming practices and proximity to the HRA county of Staffordshire.”	No
East Sussex	“The increase of prevalence rate from 2022 in addition to the geographical extension of the endemic area (HRA prior to 1 January 2018) suggests that East Sussex will not be able to achieve OTF status by 2025. The prevalence and incidence will need to have a considerable reduction through the next 10 years to ensure that OTF status in the county could be reached by 2038.”	No
Hampshire	“The likelihood of achieving a herd prevalence of less than 1% OTF-W incidents in the county by 2025 is low.”	No
Leicestershire	“Although the herd incidence declined again in 2023, it is unlikely that Leicestershire will achieve OTF status by 2025.”	No
Northamptonshire	“Despite the declining herd incidence and prevalence trends over the last 3 years in Northamptonshire, it seems unlikely that the county will be eligible for OTF status by 2038.”	No
Nottinghamshire	“Additionally, prevalence in Nottinghamshire at the end of the reporting year was 1.7%. It seems unlikely for Nottinghamshire to become eligible for OTF status by 2025, as set out in the strategy for achieving OTF status for England, published in 2014. However, if the disease trend continues to decline as a result of effective disease control measures it is possible Nottinghamshire will achieve OTF status by 2038.”	No
Warwickshire	“Official-TB-Free status (OTF) for Warwickshire will not be achieved by 2025, as set out in the ‘Strategy for Achieving OTF Status for England’, published in 2014. However, progress is being made and the outlook is positive.”	No

Recurrence

‘Recurrence’ is where bovine TB returns to a herd after a period when it has not been detected by periodic testing. Recurrence is the result of residual infection, ineffective testing and cattle movements, (with the odd unevidenced nod to wildlife). Recurrence is now recorded consistently across the Edge Area and the High Risk Area, and it is the reason why the Edge Area is unlikely to be TB free by 2038. APHA diverted gamma testing in 2021 to herds with a history of recurrence and persistence, at the same time reducing parallel testing of gamma alongside the skin test in OFT-W (Officially TB Free Withdrawn) herds, resulting in early undetected disease remaining in herds throughout the Edge Area.

It’s interesting to note that ‘Overall Recurrence’, ie recurrence during the herd’s lifetime, has been added to the recently published epidemiology reports (see below). Previously, recurrence has only related to the previous 3 years. ‘Overall Recurrence’ reflects the true seriousness of the epidemic.

And alongside the reality of the problem of Recurrence, the APHA are still blaming badgers for significant disease transmission without evidence, and still claiming disease benefit from badger culling without evidence.

APHA’s ‘Edge of Disaster’ Area

Posted on 05/11/2024 by The Badger Crowd

Bovine TB failings in Oxfordshire and beyond in 2023

The “Year End Descriptive Epidemiology Reports” for Bovine TB control were published by APHA online on 24^th October for the Edge Area counties of: Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Cheshire, Derbyshire, East Sussex, Hampshire, Leicestershire, Northamptonshire, Nottinghamshire, Oxfordshire and Warwickshire.

The report for Oxfordshire is the most extensive of the county reports (see here). What does it tell us about the progress made on bTB control as measured by cattle herds withdrawn (so-called ‘confirmed’ breakdowns) in Oxfordshire? And what does it tell us about APHA’s approach to epidemiological standards? It looks like they are still blaming wildlife by default………….

Ups and Downs

In Oxfordshire, following a continual decrease in OTF-W (Officially TB Free Withdrawn) breakdown incidents since 2018, the number of incidents rose from 31 in 2022 to 41 in 2023, which is similar to the numbers of incidents in 2020 (47 OTF-W). The number of OTF-S (Officially TB Free Suspended) incidents also rose slightly from 25 in 2022 to 28 in 2023. This is the highest number of OTF-S incidents in the last 10 years.

The APHA say that having originated in West Oxfordshire, East Oxfordshire is now the main driver of bTB spread in the county, especially during the last three years, with an increase of OTF-W incidents in 2023. This suggests that TB is actively spreading in East Oxfordshire, despite the initial decrease in the total number of incidents and following use of interferon gamma (IFN-γ) blood testing and increased SICCT testing in 2018.

Unscientific inference

Despite APHA’s consistent inability to scientifically attribute bTB disease benefit to badger culling, they casually state that persistent incidents have decreased due to “implementing control measures such as badger culling since 2019”.

In 2023, additional Defra approved ancillary tests (IFN-Y & IDEXX) for use in Oxfordshire to “remove infection in incidents where the level of reinfection from purchases and wildlife was believed to be low, but where the effect of residual infection was preventing incidents from becoming clear”. It is not clear what exactly leads APHA to believe infection in wildlife is low in this instance, when they consistently say that it is high elsewhere. Perhaps due to removal by shooting of around 2,500 badgers in Oxfordshire’s Cull Area 49 (West Oxfordshire) in an area overlapping with Gloucestershire?

Deer are next in the blame game

Reports of suspicion of TB in wild deer increased in 2023. This is likely due to the creation in 2022 of the Oxfordshire Cluster Project, which offered training to local deer stalkers to identify typical lesions of TB in game carcasses.

Not surprisingly with greater checks, wild deer carcasses with TB lesions were reported to APHA in 2023: two roe deer, one fallow and one muntjac. All were sampled and sent for TB culture and bTB clade B6-62 was confirmed in all of them which is the common clade in Oxfordshire cattle. Whole Genome Sequencing (WGS) was employed by APHA to link “incidents to specific cattle incidents in the same geographical area”, with a claim of ”further evidence of the relationship between cattle and local wildlife in the transmission of TB”, without evidence of the relationship and direction of infection. Inconclusive epidemiology.

The Bird-flu distraction claim

The APHA also claim that an increase in recorded bTB incidence in cattle in 2023 followed an emergency interim action in December 2021, diverting APHA staff to addressing the 2021-2023 highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) outbreaks. Gamma testing was prioritized to the LRA and Edge Area counties on 12-month testing (not 6-monthly) during that time, further reducing the number of tests in Oxfordshire. APHA view this change in gamma policy as likely to have contributed to slowing the decrease in incidence in 2022 and for the increase in 2023, amongst other factors. However, in addition, the reduction of EU finance after Brexit was a driver to reducing disease eradication effort.

APHA in a muddle?

APHA say that licensed intensive badger culling operations started in the west side of Oxfordshire in 2019, while the first large area in Oxfordshire was Cull Area 49 commencing 2020. In 2021 a Cull Area 61 further north was commenced with an additional Cull Area 69 on the East side of the county starting 2022.

Guess-estimated Cull Area boundaries in Oxfordshire with year of start

APHA claim that badger culling has “probably started to have a positive impact in western areas of the county but not yet in the… east of the county where TB is spreading further east.” This is simply more unevidenced guesswork and is completely unacceptable, probably driven by one or two individuals who have over-invested in badger blame and who stands to lose a lot from being wrong about the whole sad process and because they have mislead hundreds of others.

Clusters

APHA claim that “clusters” of bTB breakdowns provide evidence of local spread, and say that where local cattle purchase has not occurred, cattle herd incidents are most likely caused by wildlife. Once again they are speculating – pointing by default to badgers where there is no obvious purchase of cattle to blame; undetected disease in the herd and very many other possibilities are once again ignored.

Clusters were first identified in Oxfordshire in 2017. WGS investigations and ‘phylogenetic trees’ have increased knowledge of the transmission of M. bovis, but APHA say that they ”cannot always” answer the direction of transmission and/or ancestry due to limited numbers of isolates. But in truth this is not possible in any of their investigations – they need to stop pretending and misleading readers of their reports. And the farmers should not put up with these misdescriptions – it is costing them dearly to be given inaccurate advice.

We know that badgers have been tested for bTB in cluster areas but how this work is being done is hidden in secrecy.

Unevidenced ‘risk pathways’ again

APHA list the following main ‘risk pathway’s and key drivers for TB infection within Oxfordshire in 2023 in the following order:

exposure to infected local wildlife
movement of undetected infected cattle
residual infection from previous incidents.

Astonishingly, the APHA still put infected wildlife at the top of their list of risk factors for TB incidents in cattle in 2023. Could this be because they are still using the discredited Disease Report Form (DRF), which blames badgers by default, when there is no clear infection route from cattle? There was an impression in 2023 that the DRF was being phased out but APHA seem trapped in a neglectful poorly functioning system where blaming badgers fills the gap of attribution being uncertain due to inadequate investigation and testing.

These incidents are far more likely to be from undetected disease in cattle. Once again without evidence, APHA still pedal the same old rhetoric that they have still been telling vets and farmers: “most common source of transmission from wildlife identified during on-farm investigations were potentially infected badgers, but the presence of other wildlife species such as wild deer is increasingly reported in some areas”. Adding as some kind of ‘get out of jail if wrong’ statement that there is “high uncertainty as to their [bagders] role in transmitting TB to cattle”. It’s an utter disaster area. They also admit that distinguishing source attribution between badgers and residual cattle infection in recurrent incidents is difficult, but claim it is likely “a combination” of both factors. Muddling cattle movements with unevidenced badger infection somehow suits their old arguments but muddles vet and farmer understanding. Basically, the APHA are still pointing to badgers as an important source of infection, misleading the industry without any evidence. .

Tricking the vets and farmers – residual infection is the key

As now appreciated by the BBC 2 documentary on the work of the Save Me Trust and Dick Sibley in Devon and elsewhere – looking at the APHA reporting of 3 yearly recurrence data and recurrence in the lifetime herd history, you can see that 82% of incidents reported across Oxfordshire were in herds with a history of TB during the herd’s lifetime, including more than 3 years previously. Recurrence of bTB is due to undetected residual infection coupled with cattle movements. It is the result of insensitive tests. This is where the problem lies and with current approaches APHA have no chance of disease control – it is one huge failure.

Whilst APHA do accept residual cattle infection as an important problem and note the tendency of incidents in Oxfordshire to be more chronic and recurrent, they still cling on to badger blame. Why they do so is extraordinary, but relates to a shrinking group of individuals so wedded to it being the case; as a group they dare not change position. The only thing that will make that happen is if farmers and vets stand up to how they are being grossly mislead by those who effectively control them.

Introduction of systematic supplementary Gamma testing since 2018 has increased the overall sensitivity of testing in herds and reduced the likelihood of infection being left in the herd at the end of a TB incident. Good progress was being made but (as above) this supplementary testing has been reduced in the last two years and targeted to a limited number of herds with recurrent and persistent incidents. Absolute madness – why are the livestock farmers not jumping up and down about this slackening off?

Sadly, the picture is the same across other counties. In Cheshire, for example, 86% of incidents reported across the region were in herds with a history of TB in the herds lifetime, including in the three previous years. It’s really not rocket science.

A messy complicated picture

The number of herd incidents of TB per year in Oxfordshire remained high over the last 5 years, with a decreasing trend in 2021 and 2022, before reverting in 2023 to the same levels as seen in 2020. The epidemiological picture has become more complex in recent years with multiple clusters, some of which have only recently become apparent. APHA say that this “does not favour the long-term objective of reducing OTF-W incidence to less than 1% in Oxfordshire by 2038.”

The future look bleak

British farming is staring down the barrel of an even greater bTB disaster. APHA and their badger blame game story are in danger of making a new High Risk Area out of the Edge Area and risk infecting the entire country.

APHA are at least emphasizing the importance of the early detection of infection through more frequent surveillance testing of cattle herds, alongside the use of mandatory gamma testing on all OTF-W incidents. And now alongside other Defra approved ancillary testing by informed case management, recognising lack of sensitivity of current tests (SICCT) as a potential issue. But not with sufficient emphasis and determination to mend the current broken system. Disciplined pre and post movement testing are still approached in an ineffective way, despite their pivotal role in stopping transmission. This has been clearly known and ignored since 2018 when the issue was pointed out to the Godfray Review..

APHA’s continued blaming of badgers for a significant proportion of cattle bTB infections is now a real barrier to disease control that risks pulling the beef and dairy industries further into disaster. The scientific evidence APHA skews to blame badgers is ridiculous and as the 2038 ambition dissolves, the stakes are being raised higher and higher. Who will be the first to realise and take urgent action to prevent the worsening of this national disaster? Those in charge might answer.

Murky dealings in England and NI, and why ineffective badger culling continues

Posted on 07/10/2024 by The Badger Crowd

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.

Gloucs Pilot Badger Cull Area no. 1: Farms Still Swamped With Bovine TB

Posted on 03/10/2024 by The Badger Crowd

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?

What does the immediate future of badger culling look like?Intensive & supplementary culling