“Badger culling is not going to work as a method of controlling disease in cattle and should be abandoned immediately and permanently.” Dr Mark Jones., Born Free Foundation

Charlie Moores in conversation with Tom Langton, a conservation ecologist with involvement in High Court judicial review of decisions surrounding badger culling policy in England, and veterinarian Dr Mark Jones, Head of Policy at Born Free.

In mid-March, open-access research by Tom, Mark, and Dr Iain McGill - a veterinarian and Director of the Prion Group – was published in Vet Record, a peer-reviewed medical journal in the field of veterinary medicine.

Titled “Analysis of the impact of badger culling on bovine tuberculosis in cattle in the high-risk area of England, 2009–2020”, the research found that “Analyses based on Defra published data using a variety of statistical methodologies did not suggest that badger culling affected herd bTB incidence or prevalence over the study period. In 9 of 10 counties, bTB incidence peaked and began to fall before badger culling commenced.” and concluded that “This examination of government data obtained over a wide area and a long time period failed to identify a meaningful effect of badger culling on bTB in English cattle herds.”

In other words, bovine TB was already starting to fall before the government-sanctioned slaughter of a protected species had begun, and that the deaths of more than 140,000 badgers has had little effect on how much bovine TB is in England’s dairy herds.

• “Analysis of the impact of badger culling on bovine tuberculosis in cattle in the high-risk area of England, 2009–2020  Vet Record Volume 190, Issue 6  (open access research)
• Born Free Foundation Website  and Facebook page 
• Born Free Foundation  Twitter feed
• Born Free Foundation Badger Culling
•  Badger Trust  New scientific study reveals that badger culling has had no effect in reducing bovine TB in cattle (18 March 22)
• The Badger Crowd on Twitter