Government scraps proposals for ‘targeted badger culls’

In a response to a legal challenge to government consultation proposals on extending badger culling into the future, lawyers acting for the government have confirmed that plans for ‘targeted badger culls’, which the previous administration consulted on in March and which could have led to thousands more badger being killed every year for many years to come, have been scrapped. 

The news provides some welcome relief for badgers, around a quarter of a million of which have been killed since licensed culling was introduced in 2013 in an unjustified and forlorn effort to reduce the spread of bovine TB in cattle. 

However, the new Labour administration, which described the culls as ‘ineffective’ in its own election manifesto, continues to allow badgers to be targeted under existing licenses. An application for a new culling licence in Cumbria, under the Low-Risk Areas policy from 2017, has also been published for consultation. 

Responding to the news, Ecologist Tom Langton, who brought the legal challenge that has provoked the government’s response, said: 

“This is a small but important step towards bringing forwards the abolition of badger culling forever.  Labour has previously stated that culling is ineffective and now the Government has scrapped a consultation that claimed culling worked. But it is shameful that the Labour administration is continuing the badger culls and expanding them in the Low-Risk Area, contradicting its manifesto pledge, to appease a vocal minority based upon old scientific rhetoric and dogma.” 

Born Free’s Head of Policy, veterinarian Dr Mark Jones, added: “Bovine TB remains a serious problem for cattle farmers and their businesses. However, the government ministers, officials, and those in the farming and veterinary industries who have perpetuated the message that badgers are to blame have let farmers, their cattle, and our precious wildlife down badly. The news that the Labour administration will not be pursuing the proposals put forward by its predecessor, which could have resulted in badgers being cruelly and unnecessarily targeted across the country for many years to come, is therefore welcome. 

“However, the government must not bend to the wishes of those who are wrongly obsessed with the idea that badgers are to blame for the spread of cattle TB. Independent peer-reviewed science, the experience in Wales, and Brian May’s research which was featured in a recent BBC documentary, have shown that culling badgers has no substantial impact on cattle infection, and that bovine TB can be controlled by focussing on cattle-based measures and farm biosecurity. One more badger killed in the name of this unscientific, ineffective, inhumane and unnecessary policy is one too many.” 

Alongside our supporters, Born Free we will be joining Badger Trust and others in Westminster on Tuesday 3 September, to hand in petitions calling for an immediate and permanent end to badger culling, and to lobby MPs to take this message to Ministers.