Badgers are the wrong target, says Hubert Cumberdale, as he looks at how activists combated the cull
19 January 2014
‘I think the most interesting observation was made to me by a senior politician, who said, "Fine, John, we accept your science but we have to offer the farmers a carrot. And the only carrot we can possibly give them is culling badgers."’
Professor John Bourne, chair of the Independent Scientific Group on Cattle TB
Badgers are the main cause of bovine tuberculosis among cattle. Or so the National Farmers Union (NFU) would have us believe. Is this true?
Badgers certainly carry the disease, as do a number of other species. The best evidence we have for the impact they have on its spread among cattle – and how far a badger cull might mitigate it – comes from the randomised badger culling trial (RBCT) that began in 1998. One of the largest field experiments ever, it cost £35 million and resulted in 11,000 badgers being killed. Nearly a decade later the results were published in a peer-reviewed report (the Final Report of the Independent Scientific Group on Cattle TB, June 2007). It stated that ‘after careful consideration of all the RBCT and other data presented in this report, including an economic assessment, we conclude that badger culling cannot meaningfully contribute to the future control of cattle TB in Britain.’
