Labour and Badger Culling?

In 2019, when Jeremy Corbyn was the leader of the Labour party, their manifesto stated clearly that, if elected, badger culling would stop. Labour under the leadership of Keir Starmer had a less clear position on badger culling, until Reform UK split the Conservative vote, and in the recent election manifesto it was said that Labour would “work with farmers and scientists on measures to eradicate Bovine TB, protecting livelihoods, so that we can end the ineffective badger cull”.

How will Labour work with farmers and scientists?

Since the election, Steve Reed, the new Secretary of State  for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, and Daniel Zeichner, the new Minister of State in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, have been busy making their presence felt amongst the farming community. They seem to have been rubbing shoulders every other day with the NFU for the last two weeks, and yesterday (18th July) were at the National Farmers’ Union Summer Reception in Parliament in front of dozens of MPs, where Zeichner said:

And I know the culling debate is a really, really hard one. Very, very contentious. Huge passion on both sides of the argument. But let me tell you, the Secretary of State has been clear: the current round of licences will be honoured. I absolutely believe we’re only going to eradicate bovine TB by working closely and constructively together to use all the science and everything that we’ve got to beat it. We are going to beat it. I tell you, I’ve already said to the department, that is my top priority. So, you have my assurance.”

So who will be working closely and constructively together? Zeichner is fulfilling his commitment to meet with industry representatives. How about meeting with the scientists? And other stakeholders shut out by Government for a decade or more? He may be talking to the scientists who have spent the last 20 odd years presenting work from their own Randomised Badger Culling Trials (RBCT) as the best evidence of the role of badgers in bovine TB, but they are definitely not talking to published scientists who have found that culling badgers has no role in the management of bovine TB in cattle (Langton et al 2022 and Torgerson et al 2024).

Are Labour taking ‘evidence’ from only one side of the debate and filtered through the lenses of civil servants? The civil servants seem to be doubling down to keep uncertain and flawed science that they have propped up for two decades. Will Labour keep in place the really dreadful  Bovine TB Partnership that is made up largely of those with the commercial interests of farming and cattle vets, to advise on badger culling. Mostly not scientists. With a new scientific paper out this week (here) that shows that there were no measurable effects of widespread badger culling on tuberculosis in cattle in the RBCT, will there be better thinking from Labour? Will they drop the unscientific inference (from Birch et al.) regarding the 56% reduction in breakdowns (2013-2020) being due to badger culling rather than from cattle testing? (See what Professor David MacDonald says about this here). If they will not stop culling now, with yet more science suggesting badger culling is ineffective, then when will they, and can the law let them?

Ineffective badger cull?

It was heartening to see in Labour’s manifesto that they agree that the badger cull is ineffective. It would have been good to see a little more detail on why this is their view. We would like to hear more on this. But surely, if culling is ineffective, it is illegal under Section 10 of the Protection of Badger Act 1992? Culling badgers would only be permitted under licence if it could prevent the spread of disease  – which it cannot if it is ineffective? So is Labour talking in riddles, or poised to backtrack and go back on its first manifesto pledge? We are about to find out.

We can end the ineffective badger cull?

‘We can end’ the ineffective badger culls’ they say, but when? Millions of people voted Labour because they hoped and believed that Labour would end the culls on coming into power. Why wouldn’t they, they are ineffective? Or do they believe they are effective, as Defra Vet Christine Middlemiss has been telling them, with the fake ‘56%’ nonsense that is now under legal challenge. Newly published science shows that there can be no measurable benefit from continuing culling. They cannot be continuing them because of contractual obligation to culling companies, because the Derbyshire cull that was cancelled in 2019 was legally challenged by the NFU, but the judge found that the government had a legal entitlement to make a political decision about culling. So they could make a political decision, and a scientific one, to stop all culling straight away if they wanted to. So why don’t they? This is now the big question that they need to answer next week before they pack up from Parliament for the summer.