The effectiveness of badger culling as an attempt to reduce bovine TB in cattle will be debated in Parliament, after a petition lodged by Dr Brian May reached 100,000 signatures in 17 days.

The petition cites the report by the ISG on the massive cull conducted under the last Government, which found that culling badgers can “have no meaningful impact on TB in cattle” and the fact that over 70% of badgers, the vast majority healthy, in some areas will be killed. It also questions the method of free-shooting, which experts believe will be inhumane.

The petition calls upon the Government to halt the cull and implement vaccines, in the short term for badgers and in the long term for cattle, a move made by the Welsh Assembly in March, when a similar culling plan was scrapped. It also recommends improvements in biosecurity and testing procedures.

Plans to cull badgers have created a public outcry and a great deal of media attention, but so far Defra has continued with licensing gun-owners to carry-out the cull in parts of Somerset and Gloucestershire. However, the trials are 6 weeks long and must be finished by 1st December. I believe therefore that a reconsideration of the policy is looking more likely.

The Bow Group held a round-table on the subject in Parliament in May, following a target paper in March. Bow Group research indicated that 81% of the voting public is opposed to culling, as are many MPs.

The Government’s e-petitions service, launched last year, forces a debate in the Commons on almost any subject if 100,000 people sign within a certain time-frame.

Read the original paper here: Common Sense and Bovine TB

Graham Godwin-Pearson
Environment and Sustainability Research fellow