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Badger Vaccination:

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There’s no evidence that it can work….

There are many government reports and a growing number of academic papers investigating the potential use of badger vaccination to attempt control over bovine TB infections in cattle. They mostly start from an outdated government premise that badgers are somehow a maintenance host, responsible for half or more of herd breakdowns. Scientifically there is acceptance of the lack of evidence for efficacy of badger vaccination as a method to reduce bovine TB incidents in cattle herds. There is just an assumption that if they were involved, reducing levels in badgers might aid bTB control.

Badger vaccination can be expected to reduce bTB in badgers, but………

Published analysis has for decades shown that, as expected, vaccinating badgers can reduce the prevalence of bTB in them (Aznar et al 2018, Benton et al 2020, Robertson et al 2025, Smith et al 2022). But without reliable information on how this relates to cattle bTB breakdowns, the huge cost of a highly intrusive wildlife intervention may be just another pointless waste and distraction to addressing the very well established and overdue shortfall in cattle testing and movement control – the problem that perpetuates the epidemic.

The government field trial ‘Vaccinating East Sussex Badgers’ (VESBA) scheme in Sussex study is coordinated by a commercial veterinary group. It has organised a badger vaccination project within a  250 km2  area, (see in APHA’s Year End Descriptive Epidemiology Report of Bovine TB in the Edge Area of England 2024, East Sussex). Latest reporting suggests that badger vaccination may reduce the prevalence of bTB in cattle, feeding the government narrative. But its a guess.

The messaging outputs from such studies, as with those from badger culling, are often not scientifically rigorous. They tend to originate from anecdotal comments by those involved expressing belief that some good is being done. In this case, because breakdowns reduced from 15 to 1 during a period from 2018. But this is the same period that the study area was subject to heavy Gamma interferon testing. The effects of vaccination are not separable from the enhanced cattle measures used in Sussex  – principally Gamma testing – that are being implemented simultaneously. This was the approach used by APHA to claim benefits from badger culling since 2013 in the ‘High Risk’, ‘Edge’ and ‘Low Risk’ areas, brought out like an old party trick to try to claim success, where none could be quantitatively shown.

Is the ‘placebo’ effect of telling farmers and vets that vaccination is (or is likely to) benefit cattle, the key to getting them to accept enhanced testing with its greater loss of stock to premature slaughter? This appears the philosophy behind badger vaccination (and culling previously). Even if such an approach is ethical, it cannot work due to the number of infections often left in the herd, even after gamma testing.

If badger culling has had no measurable impact on btb in cattle, neither will badger vaccination?

For badger vaccination to effect cattle herd breakdowns, badgers would need to be transmitting bTB to cattle in pastures at a relatively high frequency, and this has never been demonstrated. Nor has any plausible, evidenced transmission route been shown – the key element of basic epidemiology. Badger culling has also not been shown to have a measurable effect on rate of bTB herd breakdown. (See summary of the science here).

More recently, reference has been made to Whole Genome Sequencing (WGS) papers to make claims of transmission rates between and within cattle and badgers.

Study of the APHA epidemiology  reports for each county illustrates how WGS use for tracing in breakdown investigations cannot show  badger to cattle transmission. For investigations, WGS is only applied to identify clades. This is just a slight improvement on looking at spoligotypes. In practice, WGS for disease control leaves large uncertainty as to the source of tb in cattle, attributing badger as the default. If WGS was applied at finer resolution, and sufficient isolates were available, the data could clearly and unequivocally trace the source of disease back to the index case, at the individual level and in real time. But that isn’t being done.

The current disease report system does not take into account the incorrect assumptions made in APHA’s interpretation of WGS information. Every week, this leads to herds reinfecting themselves from ‘sleeper’ infections. With ‘badger blame’ used as a default cause by employing unscientific deductions. Published work explains different interpretations (Sandhu et al 2025).

Published journal  studies can only try to crudely estimate the frequency with which transmission occurs, nor the exact route or rate. Their capacity to show the route of transmission of pathogen between hosts is still in its relative infancy and requires intensive studies over many years. They are constrained by accuracy in controlling and sampling multi-host situations in varied commercial settings over relatively long periods of space and time. Study outcomes are dependent on choices made within complex models that are often not clearly identified or published, are speculative, and should be considered with utmost caution. Most papers since 2014 do flag this heavily but observers may try to quote them selectively. The results reported by WGS studies are not consistent, with differing conclusions.

Some of the WGS studies refer to and are parameterised with results from the still uncorrected  RBCT analyses in their modelling, which subsequent to successful challenge, should now be seen as scientifically unsupported. Many use the RBCT’s supposed benefit of badger culling as inference in introductions, discussions and conclusions and are now out of date.

The unpopularity of vaccination with …… well almost everybody

Since the 2020 Next Steps policy revision, Defra have begun slowly  to promote badger vaccination, investing in pilot schemes like VESBA and academic studies like “Investigations on attitudes towards bovine TB control: badger vaccination”, by Henry Grub of Imperial College, which strangely still remains undisclosed, with Defra claiming that they don’t have a copy.  Despite this, most stakeholders are opposed to, or at best, lukewarm about it. Farmers, who have been misled over the efficacy of badger culling and other interventions have very mixed views. A lot of work and expense would be involved if they were to adopt badger vaccination, with benefits unclear.

The British Veterinary Association and British Cattle Veterinary Association do not yet seem to have taken on board the new science surrounding ‘ineffective’ badger culling, and apparently have not revised their positions on interventions. Nature conservation organisations vary in their response to badger vaccination. Some Wildlife Trusts seem to support it in an off-hand way on the basis that it is a move away from culling and could help cattle, while some do not. The RSPCA supported it 5 years ago, but no longer seem to and the Badger Trust moved against it in 2024.

The putative benefits of badger culling (and by implication other badger interventions) have been undermined by new analyses over the last few years. It is a complex issue for everybody to access, (see here.) Smaller organisations especially, struggle to get a clear view on the science if they don’t have access to specialist scientific advisors. Whatever the views of the various stakeholders, badger vaccination leaves significant blame for disease transmission with badgers. That view is now scientifically unjustified.

The financial cost of badger vaccination

Badger vaccination is not a cheap option. The £1.4m badger vaccination trial underway in Cornwall is tiny relative to the landscape scale badger vaccination that it was suggested would be needed to vaccinate badgers in areas coming out of culling in the HRA. And the Junior Minister has confirmed it will not show if it can have an effect on cattle TB rates.

Defra have agreed a contract of £1.8 Mn for the supply of badger BCG vaccine for the next 5 years, and at least £18 Mn for its use over 4-6 years. They have ordered £200,000 of Badger BCG for 2026 from the manufacturer AJ Vaccines in Denmark (Defra FOI). With estimates for the cost of one badger BCG dose at around £33, the aim seems to be to vaccinate around 6,000 badgers. This will increase the number of badgers vaccinated above and beyond that vaccinated in small schemes in, for example nature reserves, which has been by about 25%: from around 3,000 to 4,000 badgers. The result amounts to ‘vaccination lite’ – a tokenistic approach that reflects the scientific lack of confidence in it having any value, (see Farmer Weekly).

The vaccine cost is of course only part of the spend; labour, traps and other associated costs can bump up the price to several hundred pounds per badger. One abandoned Welsh government program in 2015 estimated its costs at over £800 per badger and the maths suggests the new vaccination costs will be similar.

The practical challenges of vaccinating large number of badgers over a large area

The logistics of a vaccination project over a large area looks daunting. Vaccinators need to be trained. Sett locations and access for cage placement and pre-baiting need to be well understood. Permissions for access need to be managed. This will incur further cost. It remains to be seen whether this is feasible within an already sceptical industry, and with volunteers luke-warm at best, about getting dragged-in.

Ethical consideration of interfering in a population of wild animals

Then there is the question of the ethics of interfering with a wild animal population without good reason. Badgers, while susceptible to bovine TB, are relatively resilient to it and may carry several strains around. Their life expectancy is sufficiently short that they are unlikely to die from infection. Despite wild claims, including those in published literature, they have not been shown to be a ‘self-sustaining’ or a maintenance reservoir for bTB infection. It is likely to fade down and out once cattle are clear – in a similar way to that seen in possums in New Zealand. Without re-infection from cattle, it is likely that the disease would die down naturally. Benefits to the badger population from vaccination are unknown, but could be improved health and improve fecundity.

Just not necessary…….

Recent re-analyses (here and here) of badger culling trials have shown that there is no proof of any benefit to cattle from badger culling, and measurable benefit from badger vaccination is unlikely too.  From the evidence, it is not justifiable to embark on a hugely expensive and intrusive badger vaccination programme, the benefits of which are dubious, and  according to past approaches, unquantifiable. It is just more squandering of public funds when the failings of the current cattle testing system remain poorly addressed, yet are so plain to see.

References

Aznar I, Frankena K, More SJ, O’Keeffe J, McGrath G, De Jong MC. Quantification of Mycobacterium bovis transmission in a badger vaccine field trial. Preventive veterinary medicine. 2018 Jan 1;149:29-37.

Benton CH, Phoenix J, Smith FA, Robertson A, McDonald RA, Wilson G, Delahay RJ. Badger vaccination in England: Progress, operational effectiveness and participant motivations. People and Nature. 2020 Sep;2(3):761-75.

Langton, Tom, 2021. Where is the March 2020 ‘Next Steps’ policy trying to take us?, YouTube video of Voices for Badgers

Langton, Tom, 2025. Cattle tuberculosis; badgers finally in the clear. British Wildlife Newsletter online 28.11.25.

Robertson A, Chambers MA, Smith GC, Delahay RJ, Mcdonald RA, Brotherton PN. Can badger vaccination contribute to bovine TB control? A narrative review of the evidence. Preventive Veterinary Medicine. 2025 May 1;238:106464.

Sandhu P, Nunez-Garcia J, Berg S, Wheeler J, Dale J, Upton P, Gibbens J, Hewinson RG, Downs SH, Ellis RJ, Palkopoulou E. Enhanced analysis of the genomic diversity of Mycobacterium bovis in Great Britain to aid control of bovine tuberculosis. Front Microbiol. 2025 Mar 25;16:1515906. doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2025.1515906. PMID: 40201440; PMCID: PMC11975571.

Smith GC, Barber A, Breslin P, Birch C, Chambers M, Dave D, Hogarth P, Gormley E, Lesellier S, Balseiro A, Budgey R. Simulating partial vaccine protection: BCG in badgers. Preventive Veterinary Medicine. 2022 Jul 1;204:105635.

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?

Vacuous  vaccination?

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Badger blame folly continues undercover

Have you noticed how quiet the NFU have become over badger culling since Labour came to power?  Why could this be?

Steve Reed & badger

Badger Politics

In 2024 there was an agreement between the NFU and Labour not to make an issue of badger culling during a general election year. This was on the basis that Labour would ‘honour’ existing licences if they came into power – thinking that might be after the 2024 cull was over. But the election was called early by PM Rishi Sunak, and the surge in the Reform party popularity split the Tory vote and resulted in a Labour landslide. Labour’s undertakings meant they would go on to kill around 17,000 badgers in 2024.

Intensive culling programmes get go-ahead to continue to give ‘clarity’ to farmers

The first news from the new Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Steve Reed in 2024 was confirmation of the agreement with NFU that the current  badger culling programmes set to end in January 2026 would continue until then to give the farmers ‘clarity’. This decision went against advice from Natural England, who preferred the introduction of badger vaccination to seek a disease control benefit. But this advice was itself flawed, with growing evidence that there is unlikely to be any disease benefit from culling, and benefit from vaccination is entirely speculative. Natural England simply failed to properly consider evidence that  badger culling has no likely benefit, and simply cherry-picked the evidence they wanted to get past the task. ‘Freedom of Information’ now shows us that they also relied on unchecked manuscripts, claiming naively that badger culling had robust effects.

The death of targeted culling?

Around six weeks after getting into office, Labour moved to scrap the NFU/Defra pre-election ambition to get mass (targeted) culling going (along the lines of LRA hotspot culling) in the HRA and Edge Areas. This targeted culling, developed under Rishi Sunak’s tenure as PM, was in defiance of the 2020 ‘Next Steps’ Boris/Carrie Johnson/Zac Goldsmith policy which was to phase out badger culling. Phase it out “other than in exceptional circumstances”, that is. This caveat was the toe-hold for future culling that pro-cull interests in the civil service managed to keep on the job-sheet, to fight back with, now that Environment Secretary George Eustice had been overruled.

But a new Low-Risk Area cull was then given the go-ahead

Under strong NFU pressure, Labour still gave in to a new Low Risk Area cull in Cumbria. Was this an attempt to appease their industry masters by keeping new culling going, aware of  the long planned unpopular Farm Inheritance Tax news that was  about to be released? Did Labour use badger culling to indulge the farmers, in an attempt to distract from the freight train coming?

New Minister – new policy? Or just more of the same DEFRA dogma?

Excerpt from the Labour Manifesto, 2024

The problem for DEFRA  was how to balance Labour’s manifesto position that culling is ‘ineffective’, with the claims made by the Conservative Government politicians and their usual external contractors, of badger culling ‘working’; see the Downs et al 2019 and Birch et al 2024 papers. These publications have a pick-and-mix of confirmation bias, repeat of previous flawed analytical methods, stretched arguments, unevidenced speculation, confused presentation, key omissions and complex caveats. Of course many of the Government scientists who produced science that has facilitated badger culling for so many years are still in post. So how do they do a volte-face, and suddenly disagree with their own back catalogue of dubious science? Nobody likes to be wrong, and nobody is owning up to it so far. (see here for latest science update).

The Godfray Review

Another review of bovine TB control science (published since 2018) was commissioned secretly in 2024, and announced publicly in early 2025. The ‘Godfray’ review panel  is soon to deliver its report, but it is hopelessly stacked with vested interest. Some panel members have a long history in badger cull science, with Oxford University’s Charles Godfray, together with James Wood from Cambridge University, publishing a re-statement in 2013 (of now impugned conclusions), which was needed to greenlight badger culling. Surely the most positive spin that the review can come up with is that Government post-2013 cull outcome research is inconclusive? Pro-cull cheer-leader James Wood said as much recently on Farming Today. But he couldn’t resist repeating his long held personal view that badger culling helps TB control.

The Westminster Hall Debate – waiting for a date

A large number of pro-badger killing MP’s were purged by the general election. It was almost as if their support of badger culling was proportional to the rejection of them by the voting electorate – dozens of them. So no longer will Richard Drax, Bill Wiggins, Robert Goodwill, Steve Double and many others  be able to drivel on at Westminster Hall with anecdotal nonsense. Might the next one, resulting from the Protect the Wild petition, be fact-based perhaps? A date is yet to be allocated.

Back to the NFU

NFU get vaccination contract

So back to the question – why have the NFU been so quiet?  Well perhaps they still hope to be granted their wish to keep killing badgers. DEFRA has now funded a badger vaccination project in Cornwall. The NFU have been awarded the contract to undertake the work, working with the Institute of Zoology.

The new  £1.4 Million project hopes to train farmers to swap bullets for syringes (think banned RSPCA poster) in a so-far rather loosely described project to vaccinate badgers in the county for three years (2026-28) and compare it with somewhere else – either unvaccinated areas in the county or elsewhere. Details at present  are scant, but have been requested. Pre-experiment plans are vital for the delivery of useful results in a verifiable way and should be open to scrutiny, especially those concerning statistical approach.

Vaccinate or Exterminate. Will DEFRA’s new approach ignite further controversy?

But why would the NFU take the money to do something they are supposed to be inherently against, according to farm research (see here)? The reason could be, either with or without DEFRA Minister Zeichner’s permission, that NFU have been preparing ‘under the radar’ with Defra/APHA to head towards ‘Test Vaccinate Remove’  (TVR ) – where farmers learn to trap badgers, test with a dubious trap-side DPP test (see here) that in Wales was a disaster (see here), and cull the badgers that test-positive.

Is this the dirty secret about badgers that is keeping the NFU quiet?

Perhaps Godfray and his panel of not-very-impartial reviewers, (see here) who  have been asked to lean towards Labour’s preference for non-lethal badger intervention options, would be expected to leave the door ever so slightly ajar, hence open to TVR, simply by saying that badgers remain a TB risk to cattle.

This would satisfy the Defra/Civil Service ambition of bringing one single approach to disease control to three UK countries; Wales (possible new Reform/Welsh Nationalist government pro-cull wish in 2026), NI (UFU currently frothing at the mouth to cull) and England.  This may be the fantasy result for Defra, but it would be the grotesque, disastrous result of using selective and plain-wrong science. It would be an extension of the UKs failure to tackle livestock disease effectively over the last 25 years (see National Audit Commision report here).

Will the NGO’s want to help the NFU vaccinate badgers?

It is interesting to note that the NGO’s are becoming less keen on badger vaccination, including the Wildlife Trust and Badger Trust. Partly because most vaccination teams have been frozen out of funding for this work that they have undertaken to protect badgers from bTB. Government has been aiming to capture and control the whereabouts of badger setts and badger vaccination for some time (see here) and it is handy for them if the NGOs stand aside or assist.  NGO’s do hold important badger sett information that Defra would be keen to get hold of for potential future culling – when the NFU have demonstrated that badger vaccination either doesn’t work or somehow isn’t enough – cover for another 5 years of ineffective cattle testing and compensation?

So there are a few possible reasons that the NFU are so quiet. It could of course be that they recognise that the failed cattle testing system with inadequate use of tuberculin and gamma testing, imposed by Defra, has destroyed farm interests for a generation while the food wholesalers continue to have uninterrupted supply. But they won’t stay quiet about that for ever will they? Why would they do that?

Why Defra’s Badger Vaccination Proposals Risk Perpetuating Further Culling

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Today, the Government has released its plans for a new and simplified licencing system to facilitate badger vaccination. While on the face of it these plans appear to be helpful for those who wish to see an end to the culling of badgers, wildlife campaigners are concerned that they will be used as a smokescreen, to perpetuate further ‘reactive’ culling, and to prevent those who wish to protect badgers from speaking out against the culls.

Indications are that the government aims to allow vaccination in 2 of around 60 areas where badgers will be killed in 2022, with any further areas covering but a small proportion of the designated High Risk Area for bovine TB in cattle in the west of England. There are concerns that there may be restrictions, such as vaccination being promoted only once badger numbers have been decimated, and ‘gagging orders’ placed upon those who sign up to government funding – including that badger protectors would no longer be able to speak out against the badger cull.

The Government’s announcement claims that its badger vaccination plans form part of its long-term strategy to eradicate bovine TB in England by 2038. However, the strategy relies on the assumption that badger culling is working to reduce bovine TB, when current peer-reviewed scientific evidence suggests otherwise.

Government also claims that badger culling is being phased out. The reality is that it continues to be expanded, with 29 supplementary culls authorised yesterday, 25th May. A further ten new intensive badger culling zones are expected to be announced later in the year. The expected kill figure over the next 4 years is up to another 100,000 badgers. The Government wishes to retain the option to continue killing badgers in perpetuity under its proposals for ‘epidemiological culling’ which has, as anticipated also so far failed to reduce bTB herd breakdowns.

There are several reasons why vaccinating badgers might be desirable – principally to prevent bovine TB spilling over from cattle into healthy badger populations and to protect individual badgers from disease. However, there is little evidence to suggest that vaccinating badgers will prevent or reduce bovine TB among cattle – just as with culling, the move to promote the vaccination of badgers is based on the false assumption that badgers are a significant source of TB for cattle, and that badger intervention is necessary to control cattle TB, when the evidence suggests tighter cattle measures are the answer.

There are also good reasons why vaccination of badger populations previously subjected to culling is unlikely to be successful. Badger culling will reduce a population, but there is some evidence that it may increase the prevalence of TB among surviving badgers. Also, surviving badgers may be trap shy making them much more difficult to trap and vaccinate.

Ecologist Tom Langton, one of the authors of a new peer-reviewed study, With vets Mark Jones and Iain McGill has been closely monitoring & challenging government bTB strategy failures, said:

“It is depressing to see the smokescreen approach to Defra’s badger cull policy continuing. There is no evidence that vaccinating badgers, particularly after culling has massacred the population, can hold any benefit to bTB disease eradication in cattle and this was confirmed by the Godfray Review in 2018. Government is trying to normalise badger culling long-term, by initially claiming to the public that it is being phased out, when the plan is to perpetuate the so-called ‘epi-culling’ – the failed reactive culling of old. 

“Failed government tactics could see the killing of thousands of badgers per year to 2038 and beyond. It is a disgusting, unethical slaughter of wildlife. It circumnavigates the legal protection of badgers under The Protection of Badgers Act 1992 and does nothing for farmers or cattle. Badger vaccinators should not be induced to mislead farmers into thinking that badger vaccination is known or expected to help control bovine TB in cattle. This is particularly unwelcome as our recently published, extensively peer-reviewed paper using government data* shows how badger culling intervention has failed to influence bovine TB herd breakdowns during the last decade, with the Chief Vet and Scientific Advisor putting out botched data and flawed argument to try to cover their trail.”

Veterinary surgeon Dr Mark Jones, another author of the recent science paper, said:

“From the lockdowns we have all suffered since 2020, we are all only too aware of the movement restrictions, accurate testing and vaccination that were necessary to control Covid 19. These kinds of measures need to be rigorously applied to cattle if bovine TB is to be successfully brought under control. Our recent peer-reviewed research clearly demonstrates that culling badgers is not reducing bovine TB among cattle herds, and while there may be good reasons to vaccinate badgers, it’s highly unlikely that badger vaccination will help control TB in cattle, and the promotion of badger vaccination continues to frame badgers as the culprit. This badger blame game needs to end.”

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The Badger Vaccination Trap and the Geronimo Effect

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When the March 2020 “Next Steps” Bovine TB policy was released, there was a rumour from inside DEFRA HQ, that its senior officials were secretly in despair. This related to compromises over its content, and the prospects to implement it in the years to come.

The policy was considered by many to be, ‘something for all, but nothing for anybody’. It would require substantial increased public funding to initiate. But it was not, with bTB still spreading, the planned tailing-off of the ruinous public funding poured into this festering agri-crisis over the passing decade.

“Next Steps” formed new mountains to climb, engaging the industry with more regulation: tighter cattle testing and movement controls, and with badger and cattle vaccination. A triple-finance whammy that the 2018 Godfray Review had hinted at. To have legs, it required stakeholder acceptance of just how bad the tuberculin skin (SICCT) test sensitivity really has been, and why ‘TB-Free’ status, after a breakdown is very  often untrue, allowing bTB to perpetuate within the High Risk and Edge Areas and to spread further to the east and north via cattle sales. Further, it required their resetting of farmer-psyche to help badgers, the animal they have been told and taught to eradicate, as vermin.

Influence from No.10?

The Prime Ministers interest in Bovine TB, beyond stalling the first Derbyshire cull for a year in 2019, has recently re-emerged. Rather off-message however, regarding the bTB threat in milk to humans, yet perhaps more visibly concerned with the claims of DEFRA, APHA and the Chief Vet’s bungling, in the ‘tough one’ case of Geronimo the alpaca. BTB is going to get fixed, Johnson promises.

Pressure from ‘high up’, had it seemed reawakened the badger and cattle vaccination policy options that rather looked like ‘window dressing’ in early plans back in 2011. Yet officials had just managed to maneuver them in, in 2020, but still to be largely ‘down the line’. To bite financially in a new Parliament. For now, work included a few modestly scaled badger vaccination ‘trials’ and a further look at the doomed immune-based ‘DIVA’ test (See here). Both are the epidemiological equivalents of fiddling while Rome burns. The disease is now so widespread that only mass cattle vaccination can possibly turn the tide.

DEFRA sleight of hand

The main DEFRA challenge in 2020, was how to present a policy moving from ‘proactive’, intensive, mass badger culling, to multiple small-scale farmer-lead ‘reactive-style’ intensive culling, but with minimum outcry. This was somehow miraculously achieved, with a press briefing claiming badger culling was being ‘banned’ or ‘phased out’. This was embraced by those who had not read the small print and who seemed unaware of the ‘epi-culling’ monster described within. Trialled in Cumbria since 2018, the flawed APHA ‘epi-culling’ (see here) approach kills 100% of badgers in a poorly badged ‘Minimum Intervention Area’, and most of them in a surrounding ‘buffer’ area, before trying to vaccinate the survivors left. The Cumbria ‘epi-cull’ has been a total flop, as breakdowns rose again in 2020, sinking the APHA showboat.

Figure 1. All breakdowns in the East Cumbria cull area per 6 month period, showing commencement of enhanced cattle controls and the period with mass badgers culling with a small amount of badger vaccination from 2020.

Derbyshire: a stinging rebuke of APHA ‘Risk Pathways’ approach

As it happens, after 2022, Defra will be running out of large areas of West and Central England to mass-kill badgers. So, it wants to switch to smaller badger killing areas both inside and beyond the High Risk Area, and a future approach that is simpler and cheaper to operate. For this, the Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA) has been promoting a ‘Risk Pathway’ approach, to try to ascribe badgers as the cause of many or most of the bTB herd breakdowns in, for example Derbyshire. However, the capable Derbyshire conservation folks have veterinary expertise and were onto it with a stinging rebuke of the claim that 77% of bTB in that county is down to badgers (see here).

The original bTB policy promises to undertake badger vaccination, related then to the need to help navigate culling around the national and local Wildlife Trusts, which it did successfully. And what looked like a contrived difficulty in accessing BCG vaccine for badgers in 2015, only lasted a couple of years once, under pressure, Minister George Eustice allowed the switch to a new vaccine brand supplier. Defra had decided that they could not afford to fund badger vaccination or would only fund it on a small scale, with preference for places where badger numbers had been largely culled-out. The cost and feasibility of vaccinating badgers on a large scale was probably never really factored-in at the start, and as the bTB problem has spread, the cost of doing so has escalated.

More badger meddling: a nasty rural conflict with yet more unknowns and complexity

Badger vaccination, like badger culling, holds several important technical uncertainties. The science suggests it reduces the probability of a given badger being infectious. However, as with badger culling, there is no direct evidence that it can help reduce bTB cattle herd breakdowns. The wisdom of doubling the number of uncertain interventions (see here) in tackling bTB in cattle was not lost on Defra. The approach just gives the nasty rural conflict yet more unknowns and complexity. More expense without evidence-base or any credible efficacy monitoring system.

Defra promises to the Bern Convention and a new BTB Partnership

A few weeks ago, government began to reveal what its badger vaccination plans are. Firstly, in a letter to the Bureau of the Bern Convention (see here). While repeating the falsehood of intensive badger culling being phased out, it stated that it would carry out a badger vaccination feasibility trial on ‘unculled’ farmland in a corner (7%) of Sussex, for five years.

A further commitment to train 30 vaccinators (10 a year) from 2022, to cover 2,600 sq km by 2024 was confirmed to the Bern Convention. This is partly it seems, as a replacement for a further five years of ‘supplementary badger culling’ (SBC) for 4-yr culls ending in a few years’ time. SBC is the method fiercely opposed through the High Court in recent years, that the government has pledged to closely report upon, has hidden the results of, and will terminate in January 2026.

In relation to government planning ahead, secrecy appears to surround the new ‘Bovine TB Partnership’ made up largely of farming stakeholders, the voting majority of which clearly want to see badgers culled (see here). 

Defra have flagged to the partnership the ‘mountains to climb’ problems (including little money allocated), but they are apparently trying to get the ever-biddable, National Trust to front it. An online Badger Vaccination Conference this summer was shelved and APHA sent away to try do the impossible – find evidence of badger vaccination reducing bTB herd breakdowns.

A bTB ‘cordone sanitaire’ for the Edge Area

DEFRA do still seem to be hanging onto the old ‘cordon sanitaire’ concept for the Edge Area and this may also be a target for the 2,600 sq km capacity by 2024 target. The ‘cordone’ keeps moving back, like an army in retreat, due to infected cattle movements. And it is not much of a ‘cordone’ when unidentified infected cows are being transported by road into and beyond it, with regularity.

APHA has a new mapping procedure that produces their view of where badgers have or have not been infected by cattle. The grey hexagons on their map, they estimate, are bTB free and may be the kind of area for the ‘Sussex’ approach, but what status will they have in five years’ time? In truth, getting vaccination going in the key battleground counties including Cheshire, Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Berkshire, and Hampshire would require a ‘cordone army’ of 1000 people and a £12 Million annual budget, just to get off the ground. The cull areas, if not left alone, will need twice or more effort with a bill of £100 Million by 2030. DEFRA’s value for money accounting ‘wonks’ have little hard reference. Like badger culling, there are no measurable benefits to bank. External advice suggest that cattle vaccination will be ruinously expensive too. Which civil servant wants to front these initiatives moving forwards?

The scale of badger vaccination currently described is just a pinprick compared to the military style moblisation of gunmen to shoot badgers since 2013. Further, badger vaccination licence applications are now being discouraged by Natural England in the bTB Low Risk area e.g. in Essex and Herts & Middlesex. This is a significant change to allowing badger vaccination to protect badgers on public and private nature reserves, and other places under threat from diseased cattle in the fields next door.

Defra seems largely to want to vaccinate badgers as a part of a ‘cordone’ and once badgers have been decimated after four years. Not for it to be used proactively to protect badgers which is its only current ethical and scientific application.

Badger vaccination is now being manipulated into being the speculative exit strategy following mass destruction of badger clans. But this year, just a handful of new farms, in a 25 sq km area have been started up, in an area (believed to be in Cheshire) where a new project is pushing the government beliefs. Signing up to badger vaccination is a whole new ball game for those wanting to help badgers. The concern is that in doing so, a system is created where the price of vaccinating badgers is the killing of badgers before-hand or elsewhere, both now and forever, and while the disease in cattle continues.

Vaccination groups and Wildlife Trusts are already speaking out (see here) and seeking much better operational terms that those offered by Natural England, who seem to view the regular shooting of vaccinated badgers as inevitable and acceptable. BBOWT, the Wildlife Trust of Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire are urging government to develop and deliver a proper badger vaccination strategy, and not secretively and at the current snail pace.

The Geronimo effect

Finally, it is hard not to relate the mishandling of bTB policy in England by DEFRA, over the last decade, including badger culling and vaccination, to the events of recent weeks. The way in which an alpaca breeder Helen MacDonald and her alpaca Geronimo have been dealt with by Defra. The enforced euthanasia and post-mortem of Geronimo, suggesting, in this instance (subject to culturing of tissues) false-positive Enferplex testing, is a very public display of both the inflexibility of government veterinary services and the external pressure of industry bodies, forming and evolving a failing policy.

It is a reminder of why and how on a much greater scale, bovine TB testing and movement control has gone wrong over the last twenty years or more in Britain and Ireland. If Prime Minister Johnson is going to fix the Bovine TB issues in England, then he needs to put a new policy in place with the funding to make it happen. He needs to stop Defra doing ill-advised things that don’t’ work and to kick out those whose actions have made bTB worse in England. Those who have placated commercial interest and allowed vested and biased veterinary inputs to dominate animal welfare and environmental considerations.

Badger vaccination is not a valid exit strategy for badger culling. Badger vaccination should not become a fig-leaf of respectability for a culling policy that just seeks to carry on culling badgers forever.

Vaccinators need to be extremely careful of what they are endorsing or signing up to and how actions in a local area risk complementing and sustaining the routine killing of badgers to 2038 and beyond elsewhere.

Vaccinators should avoid:

  • Advice that badger vaccination, with epi-culling is a viable way to overcome bovine TB in cattle.

  • Advice not to support or fund legal action against badger culling in order to qualify for government badger vaccination contracts.

  • Offers of funding and staff posts for ‘buying in’ to the government’s ‘epi- culling’/vaccination plans.

  • Vaccination contracts with non-disclosure clauses, requiring vaccinators to;
  • Be silent on cruelty and opposition to badger culling.
  • Share sett data with cull companies.
  • Accept that vaccinated badgers may be shot occasionally or even routinely.
  • Suggest or imply to farmers that badger vaccination may help reduce bTB in cows when this is not known.

DEFRA RESPONSE TO GODFRAY REVIEW dated 05 March 2020

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Many of you will have noticed the publicity surrounding the unexpected release of the above report entitled DEFRA (2020) Next steps for the strategy for achieving bovine tuberculosis free status for England. The government’s response to the strategy review, 2018.

Most of the newspapers ran dramatic stories, talking of a seismic shift and U-turn in government thinking on badger culling and bovine TB. There was also talk of a ‘shift in political emphasis’, a ‘rowing back’ and ‘viable exit strategy’. It was as if they had failed to read and digest properly the details in the 109 pages.

Unsurprisingly, some organisations and individuals stated that the report was to be welcomed and offered hope whilst others were rather more cautious or cynical. Let’s unpick what actually happened and what it might mean for badgers and the efforts to stop badger culling.

  • A shift away from badger culling and towards badger vaccination?

No, not really. Vaccination of badgers was always a part of the strategy, even if a neglected one. The 2018 Godfray review called for a move away from lethal control but only by way of conducting  a comparison between supplementary culling and vaccination. This is something that would be controversial and expensive to carry out, take many years and lead to more speculation and bickering over modelled results. Most would advocate vaccination over culling, but the level of vaccination, up to a few thousand badgers a year, does not make it an acceptable trade-off for continuation of mass culling for another decade. Especially when it will never be possible to attribute changes in bTB herd breakdown rates to badger vaccination, rather than any one of a number of other interventions. This is exactly the same as is happening now with badger culling.

  • But Badger Culling is coming to an end isn’t it?

No, it isn’t; many having been misled by what they were reading or have been told. Nothing could be further from the truth. Somehow the public have been conned into thinking it is because of the generality of the Godfray Group review. The facts are that we are now at ‘peak cull’; over 40 cull areas are in-hand and much of the High Risk Area is being culled. Last year this year and next year will each see around 40,000 or more badgers shot in more futile culls. After that, culling tails off, but only because they are running out of badgers to kill; 70% of badgers across English ‘cattle country’ will have been killed. Nevertheless, don’t expect killings to drop below 15,000 at any time before 2030 by which time up to 300,000 badgers will have died. It could be fewer, (but not much fewer),as culling starts up in the Edge area and potentially becomes more widespread in the Low Risk Area as the failed policy causes more spread eastwards. The fact is, it is business as usual with the government killing machine. This is DEFRA keeping to plan which as reported in Farmers Weekly on 11th March 2020 is to maintain the badger population to one badger/sq.km. or below to reduce the possibility of badger to cattle bTB  transmission.

  • But government accept that badger culling isn’t working, don’t they?

No, quite the opposite.  All Defra offer is deception, cherry picked data and selective use of models. Supplementary Badger Culling (SBC) has been fought in court for three years and whatever you believe about the science, bovine TB went through the roof in Gloucestershire in 2018, the first year of SBC with a 130% increase and in 2019 it remained at the same levels as before culling started. Yet the Defra response repeats time after time only the equivocal study stating reduction in Gloucestershire of 66% by 2017, based on questionable modelling by a small number of government paid scientists. Why do they do this? Claiming success and progress is the Defra justification for continuing culling. This is despite the then Chief Scientific Advisor Ian Boyd confirming in legal papers in June 2019 that there is no way to determine the direct effects of badger culling from individual areas or areas combined after many years. The only stop button is if bTB falls away.

  • Why do Defra mislead us?

Defra are desperate to retain credibility on this issue, and are trapped within their own failed policy and bad epidemiology advice. They surely realise by now that badger culling with other actions is not delivering bTB control and that the problem remains with cattle testing and lax cattle movement controls. Responsibility for bTB policy within the government has changed hands over the last couple of years. Nobody wants to own it. The Defra response shows all the signs of a government refusing to deal with their past oversights and misjudgements. It is bereft of the will to take charge of the immediate measures needed including pre-movement testing with modern blood tests, the only measure that can drive infection rates down in the short term.

  • So the report just repackages old policy with no good outcome?

The sort of cattle measures being promoted are positive, but very long promised and overdue and they don’t go anywhere near far enough. A DIVA test trial to enable cattle vaccination would be welcome, but is it the right technology? Another five year wait to find out. 6 monthly SICCT testing is being expanded in the High Risk Area ‘over the next few years’ in addition to the Edge Area. This was a ‘no-brainer’ in 2012 but now can’t take place all at once because too many bTB positive cattle would be detected.  There is mention of increase in gamma test, introduction of IDEXX testing – this is good but there is no timetable. There is suggestion of compulsory post movement testing in the Low Risk Area and Edge Area only. This should have been mandatory everywhere; it is how Scotland eliminated bTB by 2009 to become TB-Free. There is a suggestion to incentivise biosecurity by a compensation penalty for those who don’t adhere to biosecurity recommendations.  This has been done in Wales for a while and must help. There is talk of improved slurry management – this is good, but large scale applied research is needed not just small scale investigations.

Most noticeable of all the above is a lack of detail as to the extent of any action and clear timetable for implementation.

  • Where does badger protection really stand after this report?

The wait continues regarding permission for the case against SBC in the Supreme Court. A hope for positive news remains. An end to this unscientific experiment has been signalled but it should never have started.

The recently released Defra report reflects more than anything, a stubborn entrenchment of its thinking, their lack of new ideas or acceptance of external criticisms and how badly they are ‘stuck’ in failing policy. There is desperation in them clinging to the 2019 APHA ‘Downs’ modelling paper when they know the conclusions are unreliable. What does this say about Defra’s competence?

Many Badger Groups have worked incredibly hard on badger vaccination which does provide clan immunity, but does not necessarily prevent these badgers being shot if they stray beyond an ownership boundary.  Unfortunately there is no evidence that badger vaccination assists in bTB control and mass vaccination gives life to the ‘finger of blame’ that points to badgers being heavily involved in the transmission of bTB to cows, which is uncertain at best.

Badgers are still being unscientifically blamed for a significant proportion of cattle bTB infection, leading to a nonsensical question on the potential benefit of culling versus vaccination.  Never in a million years will badger vaccination protect cattle from bTB, it can only protect badgers.   Cattle need their own vaccine. The recent suggestion by Defra that badgers should be snared to facilitate vaccination indicates quite clearly their lack of understanding of the physical injuries inflicted by snares. Snare restraints must be opposed at all cost.

I hope this summary is useful. Please let us know your thoughts. These are strange times and coronavirus now dominates our lives. The next few months will be a huge test for many of us and may even take some of us away. Whatever happens, the fight will go on and will not fade. That is a promise.

We are the Badger Crowd and we will continue to fight lies and deceptions relating to the mindless slaughter of badgers in England.