Badgers, TB, culling and conservation

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As 'Brocktober' limps to an end, we'll just remind the grumpy badgerists who come on here to shout at us that while Bria...
31/10/2025

As 'Brocktober' limps to an end, we'll just remind the grumpy badgerists who come on here to shout at us that while Brian May's cosy pronouncements about badger TB are comforting, they're also pure fiction. It seems highly unlikely that the female badger whose lungs are shown here in the state they were in before she finally succumbed to TB, was 'foraging, eating, sleeping and procreating quite satisfactorily'.

With virtually no normal lung tissue remaining, the poor sod would have been in great distress, certainly wouldn't have been breathing 'quite satisfactorily' and her emaciated state didn't happen overnight, so normal foraging and eating hadn't been possible for quite some time.

Dr John Gallagher, a distinguished veterinary surgeon and pathologist, is describing here what he found during one of many badger post mortems he carried out during his long and eminent career.

Brian May, a distinguished rock guitarist, hasn't bothered to look into the effects of TB on badgers, so he's indulged in some wishful thinking here, presented in his breezily flippant style. This is, of course, seized upon by the badgery faithful with great relief, fact free propaganda being a far easier sell than troubling and painful truth.

The intellectually lazy nitwits who sadly comprise the handful of Labour MPs who could be bothered to turn up to the recent debate naturally found May's input much more palatable than anything written by any actual veterinary pathologist. Ah who needs that old stuff, badgers are really cute so let's stop killing them, killing more cows is a much better idea......

As was said elsewhere, farmers and their cattle deserve so much better than this ignorant emotion driven drivel. We're trying to tackle a notifiable zoonotic which we're legally obliged to control. If your priority is stopping the culling of badgers, you've got it totally wrong. The number one priority is getting TB back under control. And that shouldn't be at the mercy of aging rock guitarists or pea-brained politicians.

"Governmental disregard for practical agricultural knowledge, prioritising poorly informed activist pressures, exacerbat...
28/10/2025

"Governmental disregard for practical agricultural knowledge, prioritising poorly informed activist pressures, exacerbates ongoing biodiversity decline.'

An excellent article on the Welsh government's disastrous handling of TB and other environmental and agricultural matters.

This is just a reminder of why culling badgers is such a vital part of beating bovine TB. A TB hotspot in a LR area was ...
26/10/2025

This is just a reminder of why culling badgers is such a vital part of beating bovine TB. A TB hotspot in a LR area was able to tackle the problem with a licensed cull of badgers in the area, where TB prevalence in badgers found dead was a shocking 24.5%. Four years of culling brought this down to 4.5%.

Had this cull not been allowed to go ahead, TB incidence in badgers and cattle would have increased, infected badgers would have travelled further afield and infected previously healthy badgers and cows. Badger vaccination in that hotspot would have made no difference, in fact it might well have made it worse, where a quarter of the badgers were already infected.

Allowing TB incidence in badgers in a LR area to spiral out of control because a handful of badger huggers with no skin in the game think badger culling is cruel is indefensibly stupid.

More fool our current DEFRA minister if she imagines that TB incidence will continue to fall without any lethal control of badgers whatsoever.

These two charts, from the briefing sheet supplied to MPs before last week's debate, are not very encouraging. It appear...
22/10/2025

These two charts, from the briefing sheet supplied to MPs before last week's debate, are not very encouraging. It appears that as soon as the number of badgers culled begins to fall, numbers of new herd incidences start to creep up again. A similar pattern is seen in Ireland where they're a few years ahead of us, and the upturn there is depressingly clear to see.

The increase in Edge areas is particularly worrying. Once TB reaches the badgers of the East Midlands, it's only going to spread, if badger numbers are unchecked.

We understand that the govt was warned that stopping the badger cull before there were any new measures in place to protect cattle from infection wasn't a good idea. But sadly Labour is, as usual, swept along by badgery populism, emotion beating hard reality, as we saw last week.

We're hearing from cull operatives and others of badgers being seen more frequently again, and it's sickening to think that all their hard graft is being tossed away on a wave of sentimental and ignorant stupidity.

As ever, the badgery obsessives pay no personal price for their determined and blinkered ignorance. It's not their animals being compulsorily slaughtered, not their kitchen tables where desolate families face up to the devastating loss of their animals, not their backyards where young homebred cattle look round, bemused, as they're driven for the first and last time into a waggon by their grieving owner.

We and our cattle are paying far too high a price for weak government giving in to cynical activists.

It's a perpetual mystery. Why do these 'trusts' only care about badgers? Why do they deliberately ignore the terrible pr...
20/10/2025

It's a perpetual mystery. Why do these 'trusts' only care about badgers? Why do they deliberately ignore the terrible price paid by endangered prey species for the massive increase in badger numbers since they became protected?

The Wildlife Trust's stance is particularly unforgivable. They're supposedly meant to be supportive of all wildlife, not just the biggest and most numerous of the UK's mammalian predators. So why on earth don't they spend some of their vast wealth on studying the effects of badger predation on our most vulnerable species, instead of stubbornly refusing to consider any other option than stopping the cull?

As for Packham's Wild Justice outfit - they're one of the biggest threats facing our ground nesting birds today, particularly in Wales where the ban on Larsen trapping is nothing but a gift for already numerous corvids, now free to help themselves to curlew and other wader eggs without any retribution.

It's painful to remember what we had thirty or forty years ago, and what is now gone for ever. And the reality is that this devastation is at least partly down to the fashionable 'conservationists', the individuals and charities, who hold sway today.

So this is where we are, back in political football territory. You'd expect nothing less from an urban-centric Labour go...
16/10/2025

So this is where we are, back in political football territory. You'd expect nothing less from an urban-centric Labour government with an anti cull vegan newly promoted to DEFRA minister.

They're proposing, instead, to vaccinate more badgers. This is already proven to be both pointless and hugely expensive. One look at the results in Pembrokeshire, where millions have been chucked at badger vax and where cattle TB incidence remains the highest in Europe, or in Ireland where replacing badger culling with badger vax is leading to a steady rise in herd breakdowns, is surely enough to demonstrate to anyone with a couple of functioning brain cells that IT DOESN'T WORK where there is any TB in those badgers. And remarkably, even the numpty anti cull 'trusts' agree with this statement.

Cattle measures? Increased biosecurity. OK, Ange, give us all grants to badger proof our farms. Our countryside will look lovely with concentration camp fencing everywhere, three strands of electric fencing plus sheet metal dug underneath. Setts on the farm? Fence them off, so the badgers can't go anywhere and starve to death. Nothing wrong with that plan, anything seems preferable to a controlled and licensed cull. Or maybe you'd be happier to force us to keep all our beef and dairy cattle indoors 24/7, so that those cute badgers that you're so fond of can have free range across our pasture, piddling their TB enriched urine where it can only infect deer, perhaps? Have you ever seen what TB actually does to a badger, Ange? We have, and it's gross, cruel and hideous. (Shame on the aforementioned numpty 'trusts' who don't give a damn about this.)

Enhanced testing, or to put it another way, culling more cows which may or may not be infected or infectious, is the dream of the anti cullers. As a vet friend of this page remarked recently, don't imagine that they are anti cull because they love badgers - it's hating farmers that drives them. And judging by some of the frankly deranged comments we get on this page, there's probably some truth in that. But as we've said repeatedly, you can cull as many cows as you want, take the whole herd out if you must, and replace them with guaranteed TB free cattle, and if your local tuberculous badgers piddle on their pasture or forage, you're right back on the devastating roundabout of reactors and shutdown.

It appears that this govt is pinning all its hopes on cattle vaccination. Which we know won't even be in use before 2029 at the earliest, that's if it can sort out the legalities and the necessary DIVA test which will mean a second round of testing on all reactors..... more testing, more stress for people and cattle, more expense.... for a hundred year old vaccine which gives some measure of protection to perhaps two thirds of its recipients, and which will have to be repeated annually, and which has never been used in a developed country to achieve TB Free status.

Is there any cause for hope? Financial strictures, definitely. All this badger jabbing and cattle culling will soon increase the spending on TB compensation, which will not go down well with Ange's political masters. All chance of TB Free status by 2038, still mentioned by Ange as important, will quickly be seen to be going up in smoke, as TB incidence in cattle rises once more.

But how many more of our cattle will have to die, how many more farming families will be devastated, before Ange and her shamefully ignorant bunch of useless MPs get the message?

Farmers definitely do deserve better than the lazily inaccurate drivel spouted by the Labour member for Stourbridge, Ca...
15/10/2025

Farmers definitely do deserve better than the lazily inaccurate drivel spouted by the Labour member for Stourbridge, Cat Eccles. One of the lucky victors in the 2024 election due to Reform splitting the Tory vote, her '28% of sheep with TB' comes from a few dozen - of the thousands of sheep slaughtered each year - found at post mortem with suspect lesions, *28%* of which were confirmed to be TB. A very different figure. And where she got the 'badgers take five years to develop TB' idea from, goodness knows. Any badger suffering from deep puncture wounds during territorial fighting with a tuberculous badger will be either dead or as good as, (and highly infectious) within a couple of months.

The stupidity is indeed clear. The overall lack of interest in the subject too, bar a vague thought that because badgers look rather nice, it's cruel to kill them. In a TB HR area, this is an indefensible attitude from its MP.

This vet on Twitter/X also draws attention to the very poor turnout of MPs to this debate. The vast majority of the English public is totally relaxed about badger culling, and it really doesn't make any difference to electoral outcomes.

The sky wouldn't fall in for Labour if they issued a few more badger cull licences - indeed it would boost their popularity very much among the farming community. And hell's teeth, they badly need a boost from that direction. So come on Ange, you could obviously see the irony in ceasing lethal control of badgers while stepping it up in cattle, so level up that playing field, be brave and give us and our cattle some actual, practical help. We've got some brilliant, experienced and capable cull marksmen out here, who have proved their worth over the last twelve years. Let's get them back in action and get this blasted TB beaten for once and all.

This is such an interesting read, and the comments are well worth a look too. Yes, of course we know that, unlike these ...
15/10/2025

This is such an interesting read, and the comments are well worth a look too. Yes, of course we know that, unlike these foxes in Australia, badgers are native to the UK, but with the tenfold increase in numbers since they were first protected in 1973, they are now numerous in areas where they were never seen. The effects are exactly the same, the problems increasing year on year.

A link to Hansard with yesterday's debate in full in comments.
14/10/2025

A link to Hansard with yesterday's debate in full in comments.

Today's parliamentary debate on the badger cull changes nothing. It's purely a debate, so while we didn't fancy sitting ...
13/10/2025

Today's parliamentary debate on the badger cull changes nothing. It's purely a debate, so while we didn't fancy sitting through emotional guff from urban Labour and Green MPs about how cruel it is to shoot cutesy badgers, we did watch Angela Eagle's final summing up of today's procedure. It was interesting to see how few MPs were present. Whether or not to shoot some common agricultural pests for the sake of notifiable disease control is pretty insignificant compared with current world events, so you couldn't blame them for not showing up.

Anyway considering Ms Eagle is a vegan who voted against the cull in previous debates, it could have been a whole lot worse. As she said, finances have to be considered, and as she's now a DEFRA minister, reality has kicked in. So let's hope she's familiar with the sums in this pie chart - which shows that the cost of badger culling with a few vaccination grants chucked in is a mere third of the massive bill for cattle reactor compensation. And she won't be popular with her political masters if - or more likely when - this bill starts to rise, as inevitably it will.

TB Free by 2038 is still the goal, she said. But of course she then went on to say that badger culling will end next year, and be replaced by...... well, a big void, while they try and jab a third of the badger population in HR and Edge zones (good luck with that, chaps) and tell farmers to raise feed and water troughs and fence out badgers...... while they wait another four years at the least for the BCG and its DIVA buddy to be readily available, legal and licensed, down at your local vets.

As she said, wryly, lethal control of badgers will stop, if not for cows. So what's she going to do when the bill for reactor compensation starts to rise, as inevitably it will? (Hint - check out what's happening in Ireland, Ange.)

Anything else? Well, a welcome admission that TB is a hard nut to crack, and that being a bacterial disease it in no way resembles covid, which is a virus. We get so many uninformed numpties coming on here saying that as a covid jab was developed in eighteen months, what's the problem with a cattle jab for TB? Far too many hopes are being pinned on cattle vaccination which - even if it is available by 2029 - is unlikely to show any measurable effects for the first couple of years. Added to which, five or six years of no badger culling will mean a massive increase in the number of tuberculous badgers - and it'd take some damn good vaccine to withstand that challenge. Which the BCG really isn't.

So - more consultations, new committees, new plans. Ho hum, we've all been here before. Any chinks of light? At least Ms Eagle did admit that badgers spread TB to cattle, and she used the word 'flexible' to describe the future plans.

It's just a damn shame that it's our farmers and our cattle which will, as ever, have to pay the ultimate price for this wishy-washy non-plan.

There's a debate in parliament tomorrow following a 'stop the cull' petition which took months to lurch its way to the r...
12/10/2025

There's a debate in parliament tomorrow following a 'stop the cull' petition which took months to lurch its way to the required 100k signatures. It's all a bit pointless as the government is highly unlikely to withdraw the final licences for badger culling which run out next January anyway. However it gives the badgery faithful a chance to dress up in their pantomime badger costumes, at least.

We'll post a link to the briefing paper supplied to MPs attending in the comments.

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News, links and opinion pieces on the current badger culls and their effects on TB incidence and the environment.

Intelligent discussion is welcomed, but abusive anti cullers and animal rights activists will be banned. There are plenty of other pages where they can have their say.