Sir Brian May, has, for many years, been advocating the end of the culling of badgers in the UK as a means to control bovine TB. He has very cogent arguments which state that it is ineffective. And he says that vaccinations are more effective and I recently wrote about that in reference to a study which found that vaccinating badgers against bovine TB is an effective way to protect cattle. And more humane.
Badger cull ‘like burning witches to protect crops’, says Sir Brian May
Sir Brian May is very disappointed at the Labour government’s current stance on badger culling. They say that they will continue until 2026 despite an apparent pledge by the Labour party to end the ineffective practice. They appear to realise that it is ineffective. The farmers are the problem. They resist change away from culling badgers but animal advocates find this process incredibly cruel. More than 230,000 badges have been shot dead in the attempt to protect cattle from contracting bovine TB. And we know that bovine TB devastates farm businesses but the point is that culling badgers doesn’t seem to work. There are better methods.
Sir Brian told the PA News agency that “At the moment, it’s fair to say that the whole animal community is very disappointed in the way that the new Labour Government is behaving because they came into power with a manifesto which said that they were going to stop badger culling because it was ineffective, that’s actually in the manifesto.
“And they’re actually not stopping it, they’re allowing it to continue at least until 2026 under the existing licences.
“Keir Starmer does have the power to squash those licences and call a hold right now, on the basis that the badger cull has not worked and he’s not done that, and we’re very disappointed.
“We’re not giving up hope on the new government, but at the moment it’s a very disappointing situation.”
The animal rights activist added: “I don’t feel that the British public should allow this to happen, and I’m hoping there is a big outcry.”
Labour pledged in its 2024 manifesto to “work with farmers and scientists on measures to eradicate Bovine TB, protecting livelihoods so that we can end the ineffective badger cull”.
So Brian May has made a new documentary with his research team investigating how bovine TB is passed on and they have found evidence to suggest that current methods used to detect the disease are ineffective. The programme will be aired shortly on British TV. It documents a four-year experiment in which Sir Brian partners with large mammal vet Dick Sibley and Farmer Robert Reid whose farm was chronically infected with bovine TB.
Raising the risk
Moving forward to today. The Times reports that “Badger culls ‘raise risk of bovine TB in nearby herds'”.
Yes, badger culling which is designed to reduce bovine tuberculosis in cows actually makes the disease worse in cattle in surrounding areas according to researchers at Oxford University. The study places more pressure on the current Labour government to end the ineffective practice of killing badgers.
Killing badgers has cost the British taxpayer an astonishing £150 million so far.
Thousands badges have been trapped and shot across a large swathe of England since 2011. Badgers can act as a reservoir for TB which they spread to cows it is believed. The programme however and this new study have once again raised the problem of culling badgers and the study warns, as mentioned, that simply killing them may in some cases make matters worse.
The researchers worked out of the University of Oxford and Zoological Society of London. They reassessed the results of a randomised badger culling trial conducted by independent scientists between 1998 and 2005.
They used statistical techniques to conclude that the number of herds testing positive for tuberculosis within the cull zones had fallen during the period which means they worked to a certain extent. However, they also concluded an unpleasant side-effect.
They estimated “consistently high probabilities” of an increase in the number of herds with a cow testing positive up to 2 km outside of the culling areas according to The Times report by Adam Vaughan, the environment editor.
Why is this happening? It is believed that when the badgers are disturbed by the culling process they move around presumably in an attempt to avoid the hunters and in doing so they spread the disease between one another and increase the risk of transmission to cows.
“These results confirm, in a more rigourous way, the original results of the randomised badger culling trial. Badger culling can have positive and negative effects on cattle TB”. – Cathal Mills who worked with the study.
These adverse side-effects need to be considered very seriously by policymakers making decisions about the killing of badgers.
The current environment secretary, Steve Reed, said that he would not cancel existing cull licences which means it will go on until 2026.
America
It appears that bovine TB is essentially a cattle-to-cattle disease and it should be dealt with on that basis. Which brings me nicely to America. My understanding is that in America bovine TB is very rare. And it’s rare because Americans have a better method of detecting bovine TB and they deal with it very quickly and contain it. It appears to me that the Americans are more vigilant than the British and they tackle the problem by dealing with the cattle. They do not shoot badgers to stop the spread of this zoonotic disease.
