“Badger culling is not going to work as a method of controlling disease in cattle and should be abandoned immediately and permanently.” Dr Mark Jones., Born Free Foundation
Charlie Moores in conversation with Tom Langton, a conservation ecologist with involvement in High Court judicial review of decisions surrounding badger culling policy in England, and veterinarian Dr Mark Jones, Head of Policy at Born Free.
In mid-March, open-access research by Tom, Mark, and Dr Iain McGill - a veterinarian and Director of the Prion Group – was published in Vet Record, a peer-reviewed medical journal in the field of veterinary medicine.
Titled “Analysis of the impact of badger culling on bovine tuberculosis in cattle in the high-risk area of England, 2009–2020”, the research found that “Analyses based on Defra published data using a variety of statistical methodologies did not suggest that badger culling affected herd bTB incidence or prevalence over the study period. In 9 of 10 counties, bTB incidence peaked and began to fall before badger culling commenced.” and concluded that “This examination of government data obtained over a wide area and a long time period failed to identify a meaningful effect of badger culling on bTB in English cattle herds.”
In other words, bovine TB was already starting to fall before the government-sanctioned slaughter of a protected species had begun, and that the deaths of more than 140,000 badgers has had little effect on how much bovine TB is in England’s dairy herds.
“Analysis of the impact of badger culling on bovine tuberculosis in cattle in the high-risk area of England, 2009–2020 Vet Record Volume 190, Issue 6 (open access research)
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Badger Trust New scientific study reveals that badger culling has had no effect in reducing bovine TB in cattle (18 March 22)
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