Badger cull shambles: Government set to miss key bTB targets for 2025
Missed bovine TB targets are further evidence that the cull is an ineffective way of tackling bTB in cows
When the then Conservative government laid out its plans to move forward with a badger cull in 2014, it set goals to achieve certain targets by 2025. These goals relate to reductions in bovine tuberculosis (bTB), which is the disease badgers are being killed over. So, with 2025 upon us, are those bTB goals on course to be met? According to the latest government statistics, absolutely not.
The then government published its strategy for "achieving Officially Bovine Tuberculosis Free status" in England in April 2014. To achieve 'Officially TB Free' (OTF) status, farmers' cow herds have to be up to date with their required bTB tests. There also needs to be no reason for suspecting a bTB presence in herds, which can be indicated through test results, clinical signs, and visual indicators at the slaughterhouse.
To achieve OTF across England, the 2014 strategy divided the country into three different bTB management zones. In England, there are areas where bTB in cows is more common and others where it is much less so. This is reflected in how the government carved up the nation when it comes to bTB. The high risk area (HRA) covers counties where there is a high risk of bTB. The Edge Area is an effective buffer zone, encompassing counties that border the HRA. Finally, the rest of the country makes up the low risk area (LRA), where there is a low risk of bTB.
The 2014 strategy laid out the measures the government would take in these management zones to get England fully OTF by 2038. Measures included a wider rollout of the badger cull because the government blamed the wild animals for spreading bTB to cows, which evidence is increasingly showing to be a scientifically unsound position. The cull rollout followed the onset of two 4-year-long pilot badger culls in Gloucestershire and Somerset in 2013.
Missed targets
The 2014 strategy put the wheels in motion for the widespread killing of badgers that has occurred over the last decade. In total, culling has been greenlit in over 70 areas of England in the years since the 2014 strategy was laid out, encompassing many parts of the HRA, the Edge Area, and some LRA areas too. Since 2013, over 230,000 badgers have been killed as a result of bTB policy.
Alongside its central target of getting England OTF-free by 2038, the 2014 strategy set interim targets, including three for 2025. These interim targets related to both the Edge Area and the LRA. So, following all the carnage, is England on track to meet the OTF goals laid out by the government in 2014? Absolutely not.
The 2014 strategy set a target to "reduce herd prevalence below 1% overall in the edge area" by 2025. Herd prevalence refers to the percentage of all registered herds that do not have OTF-free status. However, the latest government statistics show that herd prevalence stood at 4.4% in the edge area as of September 2024, more than four times the level aimed for in the targets.
The strategy set an earlier target to "maintain herd prevalence below 2% overall in the edge area" by 2019. This was not met either. Overall, herd prevalence in the edge area stood at 5.5% at the end of 2019.
The strategy also set a target to "achieve OTF status for the lowest prevalence counties in the edge area" by 2025. However, none of the edge area counties had OTF status as of September 2024.
Finally, the strategy aimed for all counties in the LRA to achieve OTF status by 2025. Yet, there were 123 new herd incidents in the LRA in the year up to September 2024, meaning that there were 123 cow herds under restriction due to a bTB incident across those 12 months. As of September, the LRA contained 60 non-OTF cow herds.
The cull is ineffective by many measures
In the foreword for the 2014 strategy, the then Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs secretary, Owen Paterson, explained that over 26,000 cows had to be slaughtered due to bTB in 2013.
Ten years on – and hundreds of thousands of dead badgers later – that figure has hardly shifted. The latest statistics show that between October 2023 and September 2024, 21,864 were slaughtered due to a bTB incident, which represented a 12% increase on the year previous.
Moreover, Paterson also highlighted the financial costs of bTB to the public purse in the strategy foreword. He said that £500m of public money had been spent on bTB in the last decade and warned of a taxpayer bill exceeding one billion pounds over the next decade "if we do not get on top of the disease."
So, did the rollout of the strategy curb these costs? No. Around £100m of public money is spent on bTB annually these days, which amounts to one billion over a 10-year period. Put another way, the cost of bTB to the taxpayer in this decade appears to be double what it was in the decade leading up to the 2014 strategy.