Tag Archives: badger culling

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.

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.

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 BTB review update 2025: a failure to deliver.

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The Godfray review panel

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.

Cattle testing with Gamma interferon

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On 19th August, Defra sent an email to ‘stakeholders’ announcing that as part of the work to refresh the bTB strategy, it will be “enhancing test sensitivity in cattle herds”. This is “to help identify infected cattle which may not have been detected by the skin test.” This news doesn’t seem to have been reported very widely, but has been covered by South West Farmer.

Defra say:

“At present, mandatory interferon-gamma (‘gamma’) blood testing applies to certain TB breakdown herds in the High Risk Area (HRA) and six-monthly surveillance testing parts of the Edge Area of England.  We are working to extend gamma testing to all herds experiencing a new breakdown with Officially Tuberculosis Free Withdrawn (OTFW) status in the HRA and six-monthly parts of the Edge Area. ”

“Therefore, farmers with eligible herds in these areas will be able to apply to APHA from 01 September 2025 for government-funded gamma testing as a voluntary option. All cattle with a positive gamma test result will be removed and usual valuation and compensation procedures will apply.”

“Using the skin and gamma tests together is proven to increase test sensitivity, particularly in herds where Bovine Tuberculosis has already been identified.  This means infected animals can be detected and removed from the herd earlier, reducing the spread of the disease within the affected herd and the risk of future breakdowns after the herd has regained its Officially TB Free (OTF) status.”      

This change is a voluntary one. If you don’t want to know whether your cattle have bTB using Gamma, you’re not obliged to find out. While the option for extra testing is welcome, it raises some interesting questions.

Strange Timing?

Government’s updated bTB control strategy is scheduled for spring 2026. It is to take its lead from a  ‘Godfray Group’  review of new science published since the 2018 review, and this new review is expected shortly.

So why the urgency to push Gamma now?  Could it be that APHA’s ‘Year End Descriptive Epidemiology Reports’ show that their long-term objective of reducing OTF-W (Officially TB Free Withdrawn) incidence to less than 1% has absolutely no hope of success & they really can’t afford to delay any longer?

Might Godfray have decided that OTF-S (Officially TB Free Suspended) is in reality a sufficiently accurate measure of new infection (see explainer), and the implication of this is that any fall in bTB has been modest and is levelling off to reflect the inadequate capacity of the flawed current approaches. Could the very high profile bTB breakdown at Clarkson’s Diddly Squat Farm have had some influence in this decision? (See Farmers Weekly take on this). Clarkson did say he would be speaking to officials at Defra…. It appears, incidentally, that he has bought from herds that have been in breakdown over the last five years or so.

It was use of Gamma that has reduced bTB since 2013

APHA’s scientific paper analysing the results of the Badger Culling Policy (BCP) (Birch et al 2024) claimed a 56% bTB reduction benefit over the period of badger culling. What it failed to articulate with clarity was that BCP  was really a mixture of culling, increased frequency SICCT cattle testing and the introduction of Gamma testing in badger cull areas, and much earlier than indicated in that report.

Mis-describing the extent and timing of use of Gamma, that paper implied, with muddled wording, that badger culling was responsible for the disease benefit measured. The reality is that declines in bTB most closely mirror the introduction of enhanced cattle measures. Analysis of competing models in Langton et al 2022 suggested that the best random effects model was the one without badger culling as a co-variate; all the random effects models which included ‘cull’ failed to identify an effect of culling. Perhaps this is beginning to sink in at Defra.

What about the other cattle tests?

Anybody who has watched the BBC’s “Brian May: the Badgers, the farmers and me” will know that extensive efforts using a suite of cattle tests have been trialed for 10 years by vet Dick Sibley at Gatcome Farm in Devon. Working around Defra’s strict and problematic rules about the use of cattle testing, this groundbreaking work has shown not only how different tests can be used to identify the disease at different times in the life of cattle, but also how to use such a process to effectively manage infected animals to minimize spread. Where then, is the plan to utilize the full range of cattle tests that could be used to drive down disease?

So, is the new introduction of optional Gamma testing a token response to the clear failure of badger culling and recognition of a need for change?  Alone, it will simply find more disease, delay OTF declaration and drive up OTF-S and OTF-W figures.  An increase that misguided commentators will then no doubt claim is ‘due to badger culling being stopped’.

It’s too little too late; whether or not Defra attempt to cling to the flawed RBCT publications and  badger blame game is about to be revealed. Their problem is that they surely won’t want to admit they wasted  £100’s of millions and killed 250,000 badgers for nothing, so they may well be reluctant to accept what has become obvious to the world of science and statistics; badgers have not been shown to be a significant factor in the control of bovine TB in cattle herds.

England’s bovine TB control

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The world watches and wonders……..

The interest and outrage generated by the English badger culls over the last thirteen years is huge and continues to grow. But as time has gone on, the problems have also attracted a growing international following. Bovine TB is, after all, an international problem. Since 2019, there have been multiple readers from 96 countries and dependencies:

 

 

 

 

 

 



Austria, Algeria, American Samoa, Argentina, Australia, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belgium, Benin, Bermuda, Brazil, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Cambodia, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Denmark, Egypt, Estonia, Ethiopia, Finland, France, Gambia, Germany, Gibraltar, Greece, Guernsey, Hong Kong SAR, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Isle of Man, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Jersey, Kenya, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Malta, Mauritius, Mexico, Monaco, Montenegro, Morocco, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nepal, Nigeria, Norway, Pakistan, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Rwanda, Senegal, Slovenia, Switzerland, Spain, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Serbia, Slovakia, South Africa, South Korea, Sweden, Syria, Taiwan, Tanzania, Thailand, Türkiye, Ukraine, United Kingdom, United States, United Arab Emirates, Uruguay, Vietnam, Venezuela and Zambia.

How do  other countries view the disastrous situation the UK has got itself into? Do they also have government departments committed to upholding out of date analyses and opinions at the expense of adopting newer and better disease control protocols? They must surely be baffled by the obvious reluctance of the decision makers in London to engage with scientists who offer real hope for progress in the disease control process, with potential benefits that are readily apparent. The refusal of government to involve published scientists who have called out errors and oversights must be perplexing, as must the refusal to place any value on the lives and welfare of badgers as part of the wildlife wealth of the UK. The latter remains an unexplained moral and ethical black hole. This is a major international embarrassment for the UK in front of an academic and veterinary world audience.

We hope that despite England’s ongoing intransigence on this distressing issue over decades, our reporting of the science of bovine TB in recent years  is helping to inform other countries who need to know the limitations of the tuberculin and gamma tests, as they are used in UK and Ireland. They need to know, where whole herd depopulation is not an option, how a new protocol to remove the disease from a herd is what is needed;  a wider range of cattle tests used more frequently and according to need is vital.

In the UK, it is now clear that badgers have not been shown to play a significant role in the persistence of bTB in cattle herds. While more research is needed into this disease in all manner of wildlife, its respiratory nature suggests that the source of new infection in cattle is overwhelmingly other cattle; the necessary close contact between cattle and deer/badgers/fox etc just doesn’t happen in normal circumstances. Cattle that are carrying bTB, however, are able to remain undetected for many years by DEFRA’s tests of choice, the SICCT and Gamma tests. And infected cows get traded and moved, and take their infection to a new area and new animals. Only when this is better understood and accepted will vets and farmers  be able to sustainably manage livestock in rural areas without disrupting ecosystems nearby that are vulnerable to careless exploitation.

 

Summer news roundup

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The  parliamentary summer recess has begun. There can be no more Parliamentary Questions until the recall in September. Which is more than a shame, because there are questions that still need to be answered about the badger cull and bovine TB policy, by a government that does not engage properly with many stakeholders and the public. Supplementary badger cull (SBC) and Low Risk Area licenses were issued in May, and badger shooting is underway, with more authorisations expected for intensive culling shortly. These last intensive cull licenses will almost certainly be issued later this month to allow even more culling in the autumn. But the science to support this policy has been successfully challenged in the literature, with independent verification and a call for proper investigation – yet we still have silence from a government that just wants to finish its ugly killing spree.

Zeichner visit to Gatcombe Farm

The Minister of State for Food Security and Rural Affairs Daniel Zeichner visited Gatcombe Farm in Devon a few weeks ago. This is the farm at the centre of the ground breaking Save Me Trust BBC documentary last year that was attacked by some of the nastier elements of the bTB world, including Defra-funded bodies. Gatcombe is where an innovative protocol for cattle testing has been investigated over the last ten years or so, using carefully managed, newer and more sensitive tests. Each test can be used to target bTB to better increase chance of detection. Used in combination, in a manner prohibited for general use by current rules, the new protocol has been successful in identifying infection that would previously be left hidden in the herd. Let’s hope Zeichner sees the potential to finally start on changes to policy that were needed many years ago, using the cattle measures that DEFRA staff have fought so hard to resist.

Godfray Review report postponed

The current review of bovine TB science, the first one published back in 2018, was commissioned by the new Labour government last year and was due to report by the end of June. But in June, this was officially changed to ‘from the end of June’. Badger Crowd understands that it will now appear towards the end of the year, but an exact time has not been announced. This could, perhaps, be partly due to the publication on June 11th of a paper in Royal Society Open Science that confirmed that previous core Government reference science, the RBCT, was in fact based on ‘a basic statistical oversight’, and that more  plausible analyses of the results showed no effect of badger culling from the £50 Million experiment.

APHA produces a pre-print to oppose the 2022 appraisal finding no cull benefits

A pre-print has appeared on BioRxiv: ‘Evaluating the effect of badger culling on TB incidence in cattle: a critique of Langton et al. 2022’ authored by DEFRA’s Andy Robertson. Robertson has worked for TBHub, APHA, Natural England and is based at DEFRA. His publications have twice wrongly claimed badgers are a known maintenance host for cattle TB.

The new pre-print, three years in the preparation, claims that if badger culling had ‘worked’, (created disease decline benefit), the Langton et al analysis might not have detected it. As ever with DEFRA bTB publications, computer code for the model and simulations used is not provided, so it is impossible to check that what has been done is correct or plausible. Code was requested from DEFRA on July 21, but there has been no response at all.

Much of the text leans heavily on published studies that have now been shown to be uncertain at best. The Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA) paper (Birch et al., published March 2024) in particular is misrepresented as evidence of a positive effect of badger culling. Accurate interpretation of that paper shows that there was no attempt in it to see if badger culling contributed to the general decline in bTB in herds under progressively tighter cattle testing methods. The critique glosses-over an important finding in Langton et al. 2022 (that Defra acknowledged at the time), that at the county level, bovine TB incidence stabilised, and started to decline, well before badger culling was rolled out.

Badger Vaccination

The governments new agreement to fund the NFU  £1.4 Mn badger vaccination trials in Cornwall has been widely reported since January. It has been in the news again recently, yet there are still scant details available on the scientific and analytical protocol of the work. Aspects follows a similar project in Wales many years ago, that led to it being dropped as a strategic option.

Requests for further information from DEFRA have met the usual wall of silence. DEFRA’s Minister Sue Hayman half-answered a PQ on the project last week saying “Unlike previous badger culling studies, the Cornwall Badger Project is focused on testing different methods of delivering badger vaccination, rather than evaluating the impact on bovine TB in cattle.” So the use of badger vaccination as a tool in cattle TB control is not being measured? This despite NFU saying that is the essential question that needs answering. It all looks so half-baked and ‘un-joined up’ at DEFRA.

Jeremy Clarkson’s herd is OTF-S

As reported here, it was bad news for Jeremy Clarkson recently. Positive and inconclusive tuberculin tests on his cattle mean that Diddly Squat Farm now has the status Officially TB Free-Suspended. With viewing figures of 4-5 million, Clarkson is in a good position to put the disastrous government bovine TB policy into the public consciousness. Costing over £100Mn a year, the result of the policy has been an immense waste of time and resources. With a hidden epidemic that is still not being effectively detected, and 250,000 mostly healthy badgers culled, many cruelly, due to ‘statistical oversights’ and a government mired in its inability to get a proper grip. If Ministers want to do farming a huge favour, they will get the right experts to look at the evidence, and having procrastinated for over a year, instigate immediate radical change. Forget badgers, it is correct cattle testing and movement control  procedures that will rapidly bring herds into manageable condition, as it did in the 1960’s.

Will anything new be offered before the intensive badger culling starts again in September? Probably not. The lack of urgency on this issue is incredibly disappointing. Whatever Labour’s manifesto intentions were, it seems that the civil servants have the whip hand here, holding on to their dogma and their wrong advice and roles, resisting rather than following the new science. It is the public purse, the farmers, cows and badgers who are paying the price of ineffective government.

The Cornwall badger vaccination project – why the secrecy and confusion?

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On 30th July, Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Green received a reply to her written Parliamentary Question:

“To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the paper by Torgerson and others published in the Royal Society Open Journal on 11 June claiming that other studies of badger culls contain methodological weaknesses; and what plans they have, if any, to ensure that the Cornwall Badger Vaccination Pilot has a peer-reviewed protocol before any work can continue.”

The reply from Sue Hayman was as follows:

“Work has started on a comprehensive new bovine TB strategy for England, to continue to drive down disease rates to save cattle and farmers’ livelihoods and end the badger cull by the end of this Parliament.
The evidence surrounding bovine TB control, including recent studies such as the paper by Torgerson, is being independently reviewed by a panel of experts led by Professor Sir Charles Godfray, which the Government has reconvened.
Unlike previous badger culling studies, the Cornwall Badger Project is focused on testing different methods of delivering badger vaccination, rather than evaluating the impact on bovine TB in cattle. The project is being delivered by the NFU in partnership with the Zoological Society of London, who have a track record of publishing peer-reviewed research on the subject of badger vaccination. The project will continue to be regularly reviewed by Defra as it progresses.”


The following day July 31st, an article appeared in The Guardian newspaper entitled “Farmers and scientists join forces in Cornwall to vaccinate badgers against TB”. The article quotes one of the researchers involved  as saying:

“By working together to compare different approaches, we can develop a shared understanding of the evidence and use it to identify TB control solutions which are effective and sustainable.”

And it quotes a farmer as saying:

“What we hope to ultimately get out of [the project] is whether [badger vaccination] affects the cattle levels of TB – that remains to be seen, but I think it’s well worth doing.”

So Sue Hayman is telling us that “the Cornwall Badger Project is focused on testing different methods of delivering badger vaccination, rather than evaluating the impact on bovine TB in cattle”. Meanwhile, the researcher and farmer participant infer that the results will give an insight into the control of bovine TB in cattle because it seems they think or have been told that disease benefit in cattle is ‘likely’?  This approach is highly questionable. The Government statement implies that three or four years down the road, we will still have no evidence of whether badger vaccination effects TB in cattle one jot.

Importantly, the PQ asked if any analytical  protocol for the research and subsequent analysis would be published before the work starts to avoid a repeat of the problems of the Randomised Badger Culling Trial (RBCT) (see here). But this was not answered.

The Guardian article states:

“The project will assess three vaccination approaches to determine which works best: annual vaccination over four years, vaccination every other year or reactive vaccination based on TB infection on farms.”

But this is a three year project? Is ‘working best’ just a reference to a rough idea of TB prevalence change in badgers using a difficult test ?

The NFU said previously in their January project announcement and in defiance of Government policy: 

“The NFU is clear that badger vaccination cannot be used as a direct alternative to culling and evidence is needed to give the NFU and wider farming industry the confidence that badger vaccination has any effect in reducing bTB in cattle, before proving its ability for delivery at the necessary scale, cost-effectively.” 

So in summary, NFU are being given around £1.3 MN to see if farmers in some apparently badger-friendly areas of Cornwall can vaccinate badgers with a bit of training, and Sue Hayman says, quite rightly, that it will shed no light on whether vaccination is of any value in controlling bTB in cattle. In contradiction, the researcher quoted suggests the work will identify TB control solutions which are effective and sustainable. So why, in the midst of an expensive damaging disease crisis are the NFU being set up to spend public money on something that cannot deliver their stated needs? Do ordinary farmers in Cornwall know this? – apparently not according to what those involved are saying.  

In any case the public, or at least independent specialists, should have access to the project design and the analytical protocol before work starts, whatever it is actually doing. For example if there are three treatment areas, will there be treatment ‘control’ areas and what proportion of badgers will be vaccinated, and what are the expected sample sizes?

Of course since the publication of Torgerson et al. papers (2024 & 2025), there is no sound scientific basis to continue with any badger culling or vaccination for bTB control. The RBCT did not show any benefit from badger culling, so any benefit from badger vaccination is unlikely. Cattle measures alone on the other hand, are proven to be effective. Are public funds being frittered again at a time when decisive action to protect badgers, cows and farmers remains long overdue and overlooked?

Vet Times reports on new Torgerson analysis

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A new article in Vet Times reports on the Torgerson et al (2025) paper published in Royal Society Open Science last month, that has prompted calls to stop all badger culling immediately. The badger culling policy has, it says, relied on a ‘basic statistical oversight’.

The article picks up on comments by the new paper’s reviewer, Biomathematics and Statistics Scotland director Mark Brewer, who argued that “in such a contentious area as this, it is naive to imagine that a single analysis by a particular group of scientists should be seen as sufficient”.

In a noticeable first and potential change of direction, the article quotes Chief Veterinary Officer Christine Middlemiss as saying that Defra is “really looking to protect our key species through vaccination and progress that with badgers, as a key wildlife species, but cattle as well.”

You can read the article here.

Badger Bombshell!

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In case you missed it, here is the Jane Dalton story from The Independent, Wednesday 11th June 2025:

A prominent ecologist says an independent assessment of the latest study on badger culling is a “bombshell” takedown of the government’s evidence used to justify the policy. Tom Langton, a badger expert, said the conclusions by a top statistics professor should prompt the government to end the programme of shooting badgers to try to eradicate bovine tuberculosis (bTB).

Professor Mark Brewer, director of Biomathematics and Statistics Scotland, who reviewed the paper, praised the openness of earlier papers but wrote: “I would even go as far to say that, 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.”

A study by Mr Langton and colleagues published by the Royal Society criticised scientists who believed badger culling was successful in reducing bTB, claiming they had made coding errors.

In the new study, Prof Paul Torgerson wrote: “The justification for lethal control of badgers to-date appears to have been based upon basic statistical oversight.”

Last week, The Independent revealed that government body Natural England had this year re-authorised supplementary licences to continue badger culls across England – against advice from their own scientific chief. The new culls will lead to an estimated 5,000 badgers being shot dead. The government has already begun establishing teams to increase badger vaccination and launched a badger population survey. It announced on Wednesday that badger TB vaccinations rose by 24 per cent across England last year, to what it said was a record high, with 4,110 badgers being vaccinated.

But controversially, ministers have also reconvened a panel of experts led by Prof Sir Charles Godfray, who has long backed culling and assessed the randomised badger culling trial (RBCT), concluding that culling reduced the spread in bovine TB.

Prof Torgerson wrote: “A very substantial number of publications that rest extensively or completely on RBCT statistical analyses may require major qualification or retraction.” And Mr Langton called for the earlier papers, on which successive governments have relied for evidence to continue culls, to be retracted.

He said: “The independent reviewer’s views should help take a wrecking ball to a large volume of accepted badger-culling science. “This shows how misjudgement can create bad government policy, if statistics are not checked properly and brings to life the many claims that the public have been cheated over badger culling for over a decade.”

Badger lobbyists argue that more scrupulous hygiene on farms reduces TB. The Wild Justice organisation, jointly led by naturalist Chris Packham, together with the Badger Trust, have won permission for a full judicial review of badger culling. The RBCT, which ran from 1998 to 2005, suggested a reduction in TB infections in cull zones, but its findings were disputed because of the “perturbation” effect, where badgers from targeted families moved further away from their natural areas, potentially carrying disease risk with them. It’s estimated 250 papers have been published using the results of the RBCT.

Epidemiologist Prof Christl Donnelly, professor of Applied Statistics at Oxford University, told The Independent that in the light of recent correspondence they would make some minor tweaks to some of their models.

“Crucially, the position does not change: repeated widespread badger culling can reduce risks of bovine TB to cattle inside culled areas, while increasing risks to cattle on nearby unculled land,” she said.

A spokesperson for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said: “TB has devastated British farmers and wildlife for far too long. “We are rolling out a comprehensive TB eradication package that will allow us to end the badger cull and stop the spread of this horrific disease.

“This includes launching the first ever national wildlife surveillance programme to better understand the disease and work to increase badger vaccination at pace.”                                                                                           

ENDS

Green Party continues to call for end to badger culling

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In response to the new scientific paper published in Royal Society Open Science today, Natalie Bennett has re-iterated the Green Party’s call to bring an end to badger culling. She is quoted as saying:
 
“The Green Party has long said that the badger cull is cruel, ineffective in controlling TB in cattle, and unscientific, and here is a demonstration of particularly the last.”
 
“Policy should not be made, or continued, on the basis that ‘we must do something’, even if that something is known either to not work or be actively harmful. Yet that is the position the government is now in.”
 
“The science is clear that tackling biosecurity and testing in cattle is the only solution to this issue that is causing heartbreak and loss to so many farmers.”
 
“I repeat our calls for an immediate end to the killing of badgers in this terribly nature-depleted nation.”

Badger Culling – where we are now

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In August 2024, Defra announced plans for a ‘refreshed’ bovine TB control badger strategy (here). On 30th 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 21st 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 23rd 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. 

 

Activism and the Scientist

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npj Climate Action is an open-access, online journal published by Nature Portfolio. It focuses on research and action related to mitigating the hazardous effects of global climate change. It aims to bridge the gap between scientific research and practical climate action, informing policies at both local and global levels.

A paper entitled “The activism responsibility of climate scientists and the value of science-based activism” (Anguelovski et al (2025)) has recently been published in npj Climate Action.  The arguments for the participation of scientists as so-called activists in the development and evolution of government policy are eloquently expressed and hard to disagree with. And these arguments transfer from climate science to many other areas of important environmental science, not least badger culling.

Quoting from this new paper, it is surely sensible that “scientists have the right and responsibility to engage in activism” because “their expertise and ethical responsibility position them well to change policy”. This has not been the case thus far with the science of badger culling, where independent peer-reviewed science has been dismissed by government scientists; the term ‘anti-cull activists’ has been used to try to slur individual scientists (and the peer-reviewers of their publications) and undermine the veracity of work that does not concur with the established Government policy view (see the un-peer reviewed letter in Vet Record,  DEFRA press release & CVO blog). No peer-reviewed science has been published since to justify the criticisms made in these pieces. Gideon Henderson has since left his post as Chief Scientific Advisor for DEFRA without commenting further on the matter or substantiating his intervention. Chief Veterinary Officer Christine Middlemiss remains in post.

How refreshing to read the recommendation the “..broader societal role scientists can play should be recognized and respected”. This has certainly not been the case with Government funded badger cull science, where there has been no inclusion of published scientists whose conclusions upset decades of Government funded work. Not only has there been inadequate dialogue, but the only route to release of critical data and policy rationale has been through Freedom of Information requests or grueling legal engagement. 

Badger Crowd is also happy to endorse the “call for the support of activists who engage with researchers in pursuit of evidence-based action.” As the paper’s abstract concludes, “Mutually supportive relations between science and civic groups will make science more horizontal, inclusive, and thus legitimate and impactful in the eyes of policymakers and society at large.”

Anguelovski et al (2025) includes a useful reminder of some important historical examples of scientific activists; “Think of Darwin’s debates with religious authorities, Snow’s work on cholera, or Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. Entire branches of science (medicine, conservation biology) are defined by their activist agenda”.

Activism is one way the tribal behaviour of civil servants, can be opposed and overcome.

So, we will look forward to future involvement of all bovine TB activist scientists in the debate about the efficacy of badger culling and the direction of bovine TB policy. They have an important contribution to make. And it should have happened many years ago.

If you, as a member of the public, activist or scientist, support challenging the flawed science behind the badger cull and want to see 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”: