As I have repeatedly stated for over two decades now the badger cull IS down to political corruption and this from the Badger Trust reveals the extent of the corruption for political ends and votes.
Badger Trust analyses the release of Natural England documents
Last week, we revealed that Natural England (NE) issued supplementary cull licences again this year against its own scientific advice.
The confidential documents also revealed that Defra wanted to continue to pursue the cull to keep the farming industry onside despite the lack of evidence of its effectiveness at reducing bTB in cattle.
Today, we release those documents to you in full so that you can read the exchange of information. We also share our analysis of the documents.
Advice to Natural England’s Operations Team on Supplementary Badger Culling 2024
In April, Natural England's Director of Science wrote in an internal letter to Natural England staff:
“Over the past few years, the balance of evidence has shifted. In my opinion it is now clear that badger vaccination can provide an effective alternative to SBC [supplementary badger cull]”
NE’s Director of Science also pointed out that cattle measures could be used to reduce bTB in cattle and give farmers control over the disease. He said this needed to be communicated more clearly and positively to the farming community:
“in my opinion, the evidence is clear that the steps that farmers and others have already taken, alongside continued on-farm biosecurity, management practices and other cattle measures, are likely to provide a long-lasting disease reduction benefit that will persist until other options for disease control can be implemented. Consequently, these farmers can avoid the considerable expense and inconvenience of undertaking the SBC [supplementary badger cull] without increasing the risk of their cattle suffering from bTB. This is good news for farmers, and I hope it can be clearly communicated as such.”
He also noted his disappointment that a recent paper by APHA scientists was being misquoted as leading to a 56% reduction in bTB due to badger culling, ignoring the other cattle-based measures that were being implemented:
“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.”
Defra’s letter to Natural England 1 May 2024
A letter from Defra to Natural England, dated 1st May, revealed that continuing the cull was part of a political strategy to maintain positive relationships and support from the farming industry on future disease control efforts:
“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.”
This letter shows that the decision to allow the supplementary cull is not evidence-based. Instead, it is politically motivated to continue to receive support from a particular sector of the industry lobby.
The letter also pursued several points unrelated to the scientific evidence they wanted Natural England to consider in deciding whether to allow supplementary cull licences this year.
Several points referred to badger vaccination and the low confidence and uptake from the farming industry to successfully achieve this at the scale needed to make it successful.
A significant barrier to badger vaccination uptake has been the strong anti-badger rhetoric that has been pursued for many years. This, coupled with a resistance to pivoting away from killing badgers and focusing on cattle measures at a policy level, has continued to impact farming industry attitudes towards badgers:
“social research on farmer attitudes towards badger vaccination revealed that trust in
government is a critical factor to farmer receptiveness to the method [badger vaccination]”.
The documents reveal a policy that needs to offer farmers some form of badger control, whether culling or vaccination. However, this approach incorrectly focuses on badgers as the primary driver for the spread of bTB in cattle.
With over 94% of bTB spread from cattle-cattle, the evidence points to a need for far more focus on better cattle measures, including more sensitive (reliable) testing, cattle vaccination and biosecurity, measures that can genuinely have a positive impact on permanently reducing bTB in cattle.
Natural England letter to Defra 10 May 2024
On 10th May, Natural England responded to the letter through its Chief Executive, ignoring its own scientific review against the supplementary cull licences. It gave what we believe to be inappropriate weight to political pressure from Defra and granted the licences. Natural England did, however, emphasise its view that alternatives to culling are available:
“We believe there is now sound evidence that badger vaccination can be considered as an alternative to supplementary culling in localised areas and that more targeted interventions may also offer a further alternative in the future.”
Natural England went on to say:
“We ask however that Defra and APHA now prioritise progress in further assessment, planning for delivery and industry engagement to build confidence around the implementation of alternatives by 2026, when culling will end as the primary mechanism for disease reduction. Our position is that we should not be culling protected species for any longer than is necessary to achieve the policy aims of eradicating this disease.”
However, when answering the question, ‘will the conservation status of the species be harmed?’, we believe that Natural England is being overly optimistic in their response:
“While SBC [Supplementary Badger Cull] licences aim to maintain badger populations at a lower level following intensive culls, there is good evidence that populations will survive prolonged culling and are expected to recover following licensed culling. The SBC methodology is specifically designed to prevent local extinctions, with regular reviews in place to ensure numbers are sustainable.”
There are no population models or reliable monitoring in place that we know of that can back up this claim.
From Freedom of Information (FOI) requests that Badger Trust has conducted, we know the cull companies that kill badgers are the same organisations responsible for ensuring badgers don’t face local extinction. This places a huge bias on the reliability of the data, and if the species can survive prolonged culling. This is, in part, what has led us to conduct our own monitoring through our State of the Badger research project.
We also know from local reports that localised extinction events of badgers are already occurring. This is further backed up by the fact that last year many areas could not find enough badgers to kill.
Natural England’s cull consultation response April 2024
We also reviewed Natural England’s response to the recent government consultation on targeted badger intervention policy. Natural England correctly identified the need for greater emphasis on cattle biosecurity measures:
“we recommend that scope to effectively address any risk to cattle posed by TB in badgers by using vaccination and / or biosecurity measures is assessed before resorting to culling. The present plan, as described in paragraph 5.8, implies that the policy objective (to secure disease control benefits by reducing the potential for infectious contacts between badgers and cattle in cluster areas) will be achieved solely by culling. It is our advice that vaccination and / or biosecurity measures should be considered as alternatives to culling”.
They continued to highlight the science and show that other measures are sufficient to reduce bTB in cattle, without culling badgers:
“Vaccination and biosecurity in combination, especially following recent culling under the Badger Control Policy, may therefore be sufficient to reduce the contribution to TB infection made by badgers without further culling.’
And, they pointedly declared that cattle measures must be a condition of badger culling, implying that badger culling alone will not work at reducing bTB in cattle:
“We anticipate that where culling is approved, the effective application of reasonable biosecurity measures will be a requirement to further reduce the risk of infectious contacts, as well as vigorous application of cattle measures.”
They also emphasised that all wildlife can spread bTB to cattle, and without cattle measures in place, culling badgers would have little effect:
“At present, the policy appears to assume that badgers are the only source of infection risk to cattle from wildlife.”
Like us, Natural England also highlighted the gaps and lack of information in the consultation.
Badger Trust believes it’s now time for Defra and Natural England to come clean and admit that badger culling is a politically driven policy and not based on scientific evidence.
Nature is under threat like never before, and 230,000 dead badgers in 11 years is the price paid for this horrendous and ineffective policy. The badger cull has to end with immediate effect.
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