Tag Archives: peter brotherton

Natural England’s rationale for licensing ineffective Supplementary Badger Culling

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Peter Brotherton, Director of Science at Natural England, issued his “Advice to Natural England’s Operations Team on Supplementary Badger Culling 2024” in April 2024, see here. It was released under Freedom of Information at the end of May.

So how is supplementary culling being justified?

Brotherton considers that the ‘key insights’ arising from his appraisal are that “disease reduction benefits to cattle achieved through badger culling are sustained in the long term (likely at least 7 years post-cull).” And what is this based on? Brotherton says:

“The most relevant evidence to the current English situation is from Donnelly (2013) who found from the Randomised Badger Control Trial (RBCT) that the disease reduction benefits from four years of intensive culling of badgers are greatest 1-2 years post-cull and are sustained for at least 7 years, albeit at a diminishing level over this period.”

Professor Paul Torgerson, Chair, Veterinary Epidemiology, University of Zurich

The problem for this justification now, is that Donnelly (2013) (an unpublished report) is overturned by the new peer-reviewed paper by Torgerson et al (2024). Published since Brotherton issued his advice, “Absence of effects of widespread badger culling on tuberculosis in cattle” has shown that the original RBCT analysis (Donnelly et al 2006) used an inappropriate calculation of rate, when face value calculation of rates was available. When rates are calculated in the standard way, no effect of culling was found. Many subsequent studies, like Donnelly & Nouvellet (2013) which recycle the approach of that analysis should now be considered unsafe. There are dozens, possibly hundreds of them.

Brotherton also references two small studies, Byrne et al 2014 (4 areas in Ireland) and Clifton-Hadley 1995 (2 areas in south-west England) which he acknowledges may be less relevant to the current English context. They are too small in scale to be able more than anecdotal or provide any certainty. They certainly should not be used as substantive evidence.

And that seems to be pretty much it in terms of published evidence. There is some speculation without evidence. There is a mention of badger vaccination reducing the prevalence of bTB in badgers, but any assumption of this reducing disease in cattle is not based on sound evidence. It should be noted that Natural England keep away from their ‘Uncertainty Standard’ that they previously reported as scrapped, but now seem to want to retain .. its all a bit uncertain at Natural England.

Notably, Brotherton does not refer to the main peer-reviewed and published badger culling  analysis Langton et al (2022) in his ‘rationale’, presumably favouring the Chief Vets unqualified comments. This compared culled and unculled areas after 7 years of industry-led badger culling (2013-2019) and found no measurable benefit.

Also of note is Brotherton’s recollection of the advice of the previous Chief Scientific Advisor Prof. Boyd, who “stressed the limits in the evidence base and the importance of adjusting the policy as new evidence becomes available.“ There is no sign that the evidence of peer-reviewed Langton et al (2022) and Torgerson et al (2024) is being recognized by NE yet.

Badger Crowd understands that Natural England have received a letter requesting that supplementary badger cull licences should be revoked on the basis of new published science. It’s well past time to stop the badger cull immediately on the scientific evidence, and not least the comprehensive peer-reviewed evidence.

Defra’s zombie killing machine won’t stop

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DEFRA don’t want to vaccinate badgers, they want to keep killing them, against advice from Natural England.

As the first badgers of summer 2024 are being killed outright by a shot to the heart, or scream and die slowly in pain, a Freedom of Information response released on 31st May has revealed a morass of Government confusion. Communications between Defra and Natural England  from April and May of this year show DEFRA contriving to carry on culling. By aligning with the views of its highly controlled ‘BTB Partnership’, and stalling the promised badger vaccination programme, that they have had four years to prepare for.

Dr Peter Brotherton’s (Director of Science at Natural England) advice in April, (see here), a response by Defra in early May (here), and final decision by NE (here) tell the story. NE’s response to the recent policy consultation (here), is also very revealing. Brotherton gives NE’s view on Supplementary Badger Culling (SBC) that are done after 4-years of Intensive culling, is that badger vaccination should be the best option to promote, based upon his view of the available scientific evidence :

“I can find no justification for authorising further supplementary badger culls in 2024 for the purpose of preventing the spread of disease and recommend against doing so.”

However, on 1st May, Sally Randall who is the Director General for Food, Biosecurity and Trade for DEFRA responded saying:

“The experience of the last three years has shown that whatever changes are made to disease control, those most affected by the disease, must have confidence in both the process and the trajectory. Changes need to be carefully timed and communicated, whilst balancing a range of potentially opposing views. Any abrupt changes to policy would seriously undermine our ability to engage constructively with the industry on future disease control interventions.”

The letter included an Annex A. with advice from APHA and the Chief Veterinary Officer, stating that Defra’s view was that SBC should continue until badger vaccination was fully viable, and that would take an unspecified amount of time. DEFRA said it had not gone far enough with preparations and that there was no financial capacity to promote it. They implied that farmers didn’t want it either. Then just two days later on 3rd May, Oliver Harmar, Natural England Chief Operating Officer, responsible for badger cull licensing at Natural England, decided to grant nine new Supplementary Badger Control licences and to authorise seventeen existing SBC licences in 2024, the decision having been passed by Tony Juniper and the NE Board. The licences were issued around mid-May.

But of equal importance, Brotherton made the following remarks:

“As I have said in previous advice, much greater effort is needed to raise awareness of the disease reduction benefits of the alternatives to culling among the farmer community, in my opinion. In this regard, it is disappointing that the recent publication by Birch et al. 2024 has been widely reported as providing evidence that badger culling reduces the incidence of bTB by 56%, when in fact the study shows the overall impact of implementing a range of bTB control measures, not culling alone. Further research to establish the relative disease reduction contributions of the different control measures is needed.”

This of course is the point made problematic by the crude and misleading ‘Abstract’ at the start of the APHA draft report (here) and following on with the published version (here). The recent Defra consultation on introducing so-called ‘targeted culling’ claimed that badger culling was responsible for herd incidence reduction, although it had no evidence of this. Brotherton is therefore disappointed by Steve Barclay, the Secretary of State for Defra and Defra Minister Douglas Miller and previous Defra Ministers. They have all seriously misled the public with badger cull claims and this is now a matter for legal consideration. Reductions in herd breakdowns could all have been down to tighter cattle testing and the accepted published peer reviewed and uncontested science on changes to herd incidence peaking and falling before badger culling was rolled out – and shown at the County level (2013-2019) suggests that this is most likely the case (see Langton, Jones and McGill 2022).

In previous High Court challenges over the future of badger culling, the ruling has been that decisions on culling can also be political decisions. If the future of badger culling is to be based on the science, then we will be seeing an end to culling very soon. Intensive, Supplementary, Low Risk Area, and Targeted culling are mistakes that should, and will be seen as such, and confined to the past.

While the disease benefit of badger vaccination is (like badger culling) not proven, the benefits of tighter cattle testing are well established. It is cattle measures done properly that will deliver the much needed bovine tuberculosis disease control for Britain and Ireland.

On 5 July the new Government must focus on advanced cattle testing, quarantines and lockdowns and consign badger culling to history, where it belongs.