20 Sept 2022
Campaigners urge new environment secretary Ranil Jayawardena to order a review, although officials insist the department’s stance has not changed.
Allister Webb
Job Title
Badger culling in the UK could continue beyond 2025 amid the conflicting claims about whether the practice is effective in curbing the spread of bTB, Defra has admitted.
Officials insist the department’s stance has not changed following the appointment of the new environment secretary Ranil Jayawardena, despite anti-cull protests taking place in his constituency.
But campaigners have urged him to order a review, after scientists at the centre of the academic row about the cull’s effectiveness demanded an independent inquiry into Defra’s conduct.
Mr Jayawardena, the MP for North East Hampshire, was appointed by the new prime minister Liz Truss to succeed George Eustice at Defra on 6 September.
The appointment prompted protests in Mr Jayawardena’s constituency by locally based campaigners and The Badger Trust demanding an end to the cull, which is already estimated to have killed more than 175,000 badgers since 2013.
Nick Cole, founder and chairperson of the North East Hampshire Badger Group, said he enjoyed a “decent relationship” with Mr Jayawardena as a constituency MP and invited him to join them on a sett survey.
He added: “In terms of North East Hampshire Badger Group, we’re part of the APHA Edge project and, to date, they’ve identified no badgers in Hampshire that have tested positive for bTB. And if that doesn’t tell him something then he’s not listening.”
Badger Trust executive director Peter Hambly said: “Mr Jayawardena should start with a clean slate and halt the cull today. He should follow the evidence and focus on cattle, not the badger.”
But Defra insisted the policy had been “successful in helping to turn the tide” against bTB, claiming that levels of the disease in areas where culling began in 2016 had fallen from 17.2 official TB-free status withdrawn (OFTw) breakdowns per 100 herd years at risk in 2016-17, to 8.7 OFTw breakdowns per 100 herd years at risk in 2019-20.
In areas where culling activity began in 2017, the department said the equivalent figures had fallen from 15.3 in 2017-18 to 8.4 by 2019-20, while levels in areas where no culling took place remained “relatively stable”.
A spokesperson said the department’s position remains in line with an updated strategy unveiled last year, which included a commitment to issue no new intensive cull licences after the end of 2022 and suggested existing licences could be cut short after two years, rather than five, if supported by scientific evidence.
He added: “We are moving to the next phase of our long-term strategy, which will focus on badger and cattle vaccination.
“We envisage that the intensive badger cull phase of our strategy will wind down from 2025. Under current plans, culling will only remain an option where an epidemiological assessment indicates it is required.”
However, opponents fear that could enable the killing to potentially continue indefinitely.
Consultant ecologist Tom Langton, who co-authored an academic paper in the spring that concluded no effect had been seen on bTB levels from the cull, said the policy was now being “rehashed”.
Speaking during a Parliamentary debate in July, Green Party MP Caroline Lucas argued that allowing culling beyond 2025 was a loophole that could be used “in a rather more indiscriminate way” than present ministers intended.
Defra hopes that a bTB vaccine, which is currently being trialled, will be available for use by 2025.
But the department has also faced further questions over its response to the paper by Mr Langton, Mark Jones and Iain McGill, published in Vet Record in March, after a freedom of information request revealed details of the correspondence between it and the journal prior to publication.
In one email, a senior Defra official wrote: “if published as it currently stands we would be concerned, and honestly saddened, that this would reflect badly on the BVA and the Vet Record, and in turn the scientific rigour of the British veterinary profession which they represent.”
The department also issued a public rebuttal when the paper was finally released and continues to maintain that its analysis is “flawed”.
But Mr Langton called for an independent inquiry into what he described as an “interference with the scientific record”.
He argued for action to reform a TB policy he branded as a mess, adding: “However it’s done, it needs to be done quickly. It’s not just a clearout. It’s a change of culture we need.”
In a blog entry on its website, Defra insisted suggestions that it had forced changes to be made to the paper prior to publication were “simply not true”.
