UK

Badger cull not over yet

SMILE

Labour Hub Editors

By Kevin Flack

The Labour Government’s announcement that the badger cull will end in this Parliament is good news for the future of farming and the protection of wildlife. It fulfils a manifesto commitment that said, “We will work with farmers and scientists on measures to eradicate Bovine TB, protecting livelihoods, so that we can end the ineffective badger cull.”

So why are so many animal campaigners and the authoritative Badger Trust not celebrating yet? This is because under current licences around another 50,000 badgers are to be culled this year across a swathe of western and midlands regions, with the same expected next year. Indeed, on the Labour announcement, culling could continue till 2029. This poses the question that if culling is ineffective, as recognised in the manifesto and previous announcements by well-respected Shadow Secretaries of State like Luke Pollard and Sue Hayman (a smallholder herself), why on earth is it continuing?

For those who plead legal reasons based on contracts already signed, surely the answer is to fulfil the payment obligations of those contracts but exempt those involved from actually culling any animals. Perhaps the most unscientific element of continuing the cull is that no one knows how many badgers are left out there. As the Badger Trust has stated, “They haven’t counted them and haven’t tested them but continue to slaughter them.”

Compensation payments from public money also continue to be paid to those farmers whose cattle contract Bovine TB – £80 million a year at present, showing that culling really isn’t having a serious effect. Last year 19,570 badgers were culled, bringing the overall total to 230,125. From “moving the goalposts,” as Tory Secretary of State Owen Patterson famously claimed, they may indeed have left the pitch altogether in some areas.

The cull would not have continued if some evidence did not exist that it was having an effect – one report showed a maximum reduction of 16% of Bovine TB in cattle herds where culling was taking place, although how much of this was down to culling, and how much to other factors, is unknown. Other scientific evidence outweighs this – detailed information on this aspect can be found in the Badger Trust’s 2024 report, Tackling Bovine TB Together.

Much is down to appeasing the National Farmers Union (NFU) which, under pressure from some of their members, wanted the previous government to be “seen to be doing something.” The NFU is, after all, probably the strongest union in the country when the Conservatives are in office. But way back in 2018, a Tory government inquiry showed that culling was not the answer.

It is credit to Labour Minister Daniel Zeichner and his team that they have confronted the NFU, even if the end of the cull has been delayed. It bodes well for Labour’s overall agricultural policy when Keir Starmer has been extremely close to them, with a farm visit in Wiltshire with NFU leader Minette Batters – ennobled in the government’s first list of new peers – happening in the very first week of his Labour leadership. 

Last year, Zeichner had already said firmly that, “I speak to a lot of farmers and unlike her (then DEFRA Secretary of State Therese Coffey) I don’t just tell them what they want to hear, I have to have answers.” In Wales, the Labour government ended culling in 2012 and has managed to significantly reduce Bovine TB outbreaks by other methods.

Brian May’s BBC2 documentary on the issue the week of the announcement was a good scientific exposé of the cull from someone who has not only engaged farmers in the debate but even taken the matter into the heart of the beast – Conservative Party Conference. This is important, because however overwhelming the animal welfare side of the argument, it is the science that must prevail. Professor Rosie Woodruffe and others who sat on the Conservative Government’s Independent Scientific Group on Bovine TB have come to the conclusion that culling badgers isn’t the answer  – these scientists are no bunny huggers, they culled hundreds of badgers themselves as part of their trials.

Bovine TB is mainly spread from cattle to cattle – and even cattle to badger – and the threefold way forward is clearly proper testing, better biosecurity and cattle vaccination. The government’s aim is to make England Bovine TB -free by 2028 using these methods.

 It would be churlish not to welcome the announcement of the end of the cull, but if it is “ineffective,” as Labour rightly claims, why on earth is it not immediate?

Kevin Flack is a member of a rural Constituency Labour Party and writes a monthly column on rural politics for Labour Briefing.

Image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/hellie55/24033275099 Author: hehaden. Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic CC BY-NC 2.0

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