Badger culling in the United Kingdom was a permitted method to reduce badger numbers in the hope of controlling the spread of bovine tuberculosis (bTB), which is caused by the Mycobacterium bovis bacteria.Summary of responses to the consultation on Guidance to Natural England on licensed badger control to prevent the spread of bovine tuberculosis. Defra, published July 2017, retrieved 20 July 2017. Humans can catch bTB, but public health control measures, including milk pasteurisation and the BCG vaccine, mean it is not a significant risk to human health. The disease affects cattle and other farm animals, some species of wildlife including badgers and deer, and some domestic pets such as cats. Geographically, bTB spread from isolated pockets in the late 1980s to cover large areas of the west and south-west of England and Wales in the 2010s. Some people believed this correlated with the lack of badger control.
After 2024, no new badger culling licences were granted, with the government allowing existing licences to continue until they ran out, in favour of vaccination to stop bTB spreading. By May 2026, the only licences remaining were not in use, effectively ending the practice of badger culling in the United Kingdom.
A targeted cull in Pembrokeshire in Wales began in 2009, and was cancelled in 2012 after the Welsh Labour administration concluded that culling was ineffective. In October 2013, culling in England was tried in two pilot areas in west Gloucestershire and west Somerset. The main aim of these trials was to assess the humaneness of culling using "free shooting" (previous methods trapped the badgers in cages before shooting them). The trials were repeated in 2014 and 2015, and expanded to a larger area in later years.Badger cull extended in England with more than 60,000 in line of fire, The Guardian, published 7 September 2020, accessed 11 November 2020
Culling was intended to manage the cost of bTB both to farmers and to the taxpayer. DEFRA compensated farmers for culled cattle, paying between £82 (for a young calf) and £1,543 (for a breeding bull), with higher values for pedigree animals, ranging up to £5,267.Bovine TB compensation value tables, gov.uk, published 1 February 2024, accessed 4 February 2024 Farmers bear other costs from a bTB outbreak on their farm, and these are mandatory and uncompensated. After compensation, a bTB outbreak costs the farmer a median £6,600.Cost of TB breakdown report, TB hub, based on figures from June 2020 in this DEFRA publication, retrieved 4 February 2024
By 2024, the United Kingdom had culled 210,000 badgers at a cost of £58.8 million.Badger culls bovine TB report, The Guardian, published 4 January 2024, accessed 4 February 2024 In the same period, it culled 330,000 cattle.Has a decade of badger culling worked?, BBC, published 4 July 2023, accessed 4 February 2024 Tuberculosis compensation paid to farmers was costing the UK taxpayer around £150 million per annum.APHA science blog, gov.uk, published 24 March 2023, accessed 4 February 2024
Status of badgers European badgers (Meles meles) are not an endangered species, but they are amongst the most legally protected wild animals in the UK, being shielded under the Protection of Badgers Act 1992, the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, and the Convention on the Conservation of European Wildlife and Natural Habitats.
Early history
Before 1992
Many badgers in Europe were gassed during the 1960s and 1970s to control rabies.The European badger (Meles meles) . badger.org.uk Mycobacterium bovis was discovered in 1882, but until 1960, no compulsory tests for the disease had been brought in; previously, testing was voluntary. Herds that were attested as free of bovine tuberculosis (bTb) were tested annually and received a premium of 1d per gallon for their milk. Those not tested were able to carry on trading without testing. A programme of test-and-slaughter began and was successful. Until the 1980s, badger culling in the UK was undertaken in the form of gassing. By 1960, eradicating bTb in the UK was thought possible, until 1971, when a new population of tuberculous badgers was located in Gloucestershire. Subsequent experiments showed that bTB can be spread from badgers to cattle, and some farmers tried to cull badgers on their land. Wildlife protection groups lobbied Parliament, which responded by passing the Badgers Act 1973 (c. 57), making it an offence to attempt to kill, take, or injure badgers, or interfere with their setts without a licence. These laws are now contained in the Protection of Badgers Act 1992.Protection of Badgers Act 1992, s.10.
Randomised Badger Culling Trials (1998–2008) In 1997, an independent scientific body issued the Krebs Report. This concluded a lack of evidence remained about whether badger culling would help control the spread of bTB and proposed a series of trials.
The government then ordered an independently run series of trials, known as the Randomised Badger Culling Trials (RBCT). These trials, in which 11,000 badgers in selected areas were cage-trapped and killed, were conducted from 1998 to 2005, although they were briefly suspended due to the outbreak of foot-and-mouth in 2001. The incidence of bTB in and around 10 large (100 km2) areas in which annual badger culling occurred was compared with the incidence in and around 10 matched areas with no such culling.
In 2003, as a result of initial findings from the RBCT, the reactive component of the culling where badgers were culled in and around farms where bTB was present in cattle, was suspended. This was because the RBCT recorded a 27% increase in bTB outbreaks in these areas of the trial compared to areas in which no culling took place. The advisory group of the trials concluded that reactive culling could not be used to control bTB.
In December 2005, a preliminary analysis of the RBCT data showed that proactive culling, in which most badgers in a particular area were culled, reduced the incidence of bTB by 19% within the cull area, but it increased by 29% within 2 km outside the cull area. The report, therefore, warned of a "perturbation effect" in which culling leads to changes in badger behaviour thereby increasing infections within the badger colonies and the migration of infected badgers to previously uninfected areas. Whilst culling produced a decreased badger population locally, it disrupted the badgers' territorial system, causing any surviving badgers to range more widely, which itself led to a substantial increase in the incidence of the disease, and its wider dispersal. It also reported that a culling policy "would incur costs that were between four and five times higher than the economic benefits gained" and "if the predicted detrimental effects in the surrounding areas are included, the overall benefits achieved would fall to approximately one-fortieth of the costs incurred". In summary, the report argued that it would be more cost effective to improve cattle control measures, with zoning and supervision of herds, than it would be to cull badgers.
In 2007, the final results of the trials, conducted by the Independent Scientific Group on Cattle TB, were submitted to David Miliband, the then Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. The report stated that "badger culling can make no meaningful contribution to cattle bTB control in Britain. Indeed, some policies under consideration are likely to make matters worse rather than better". According to the report:
In October 2007, after considering the report and consulting other advisors, the government's then-chief scientific advisor, Professor Sir David King, produced a report of his own, which concluded that culling could indeed make a useful contribution to controlling bTB. This was criticised by scientists, most notably in the editorial of Nature, which implied King was being influenced by politics.
In July 2008, Hilary Benn, the then-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, refused to authorise a badger cull because of the practicalities and cost of a cull and the scale and length of time required to implement it, with no guarantee of success and the potential for making the disease worse. Benn went on to highlight other measures that would be taken, including allocating £20M to the development of an effective injectable bTB vaccine for both cattle and badgers, and an oral badger vaccine.
Follow-up reports In 2010, a scientific report was published in which bTB incidence in cattle was monitored in and around RBCT areas after culling ended. The report showed that the benefits inside culled areas decreased over time and were no longer detectable three years after culling ceased. In areas adjoining those which culled, a trend indicated beneficial effects immediately after the end of culling were insignificant, and had disappeared 18 months after the cull ceased. The financial costs of culling an idealized 150 km2 area would exceed the savings achieved through reduced bTB by factors of 2.0 to 3.5. The report concluded: "These results, combined with evaluation of alternative culling methods, suggest that badger culling is unlikely to contribute effectively to the control of cattle [bTB] in Britain."
In 2024 and 2025 two papers cast doubt on the RBCT's findings. Re-analysis of the RBCT data found insufficient evidence that culling of badgers had any effect on the incidence of bovine tuberculosis in cattle.
The Bovine TB Eradication Group for England (2008) In November 2008, the Bovine TB Eradication Group for England was set up. This group included DEFRA officials, members from the veterinary profession and farming industry representatives. Based on research published up to February 2010, the Group concluded that the benefits of the cull were not sustained beyond the culling and that it was ineffective method of controlling bTB in Britain. They said:
In Wales In 2009, the Welsh Assembly authorised a nonselective badger cull in the Tuberculosis Eradication (Wales) Order 2009; the Badger Trust sought a judicial review of the decision, but their application was denied. The Badger Trust appealed in Badger Trust v Welsh Ministers EWCA Civ 807; the Court of Appeal ruled that the 2009 Order should be quashed. The Welsh Assembly replaced proposals for a cull in 2011 with a five-year vaccination programme following a review of the science.
Post-2010 history After the 2010 general election, the new Welsh environment minister, John Griffiths, ordered a review of the scientific evidence in favour of and against a cull. The incoming DEFRA Secretary of State, Caroline Spelman, began her Bovine TB Eradication Programme for England, which she described as "a science-led cull of badgers in the worst-affected areas". The Badger Trust put it differently, saying, "badgers are to be used as target practice". Shadow Environment Secretary Mary Creagh said it was prompted by "short-term political calculation".
As an attempt to reduce the economic costs of live cage-trapping followed by shooting used in the RBCT, the post-2010 culls in England also allowed for the first time, "free shooting", i.e. shooting free-roaming badgers with firearms. Licences to cull badgers under the Protection of Badgers Act 1992 are available from Natural England, which require applicants to show that they have the skills, training, and resources to cull in an efficient, humane, and effective way, and to provide a Badger Control Plan. This meant that farmers were allowed to shoot the badgers themselves, or to employ suitably qualified persons to do this. The actual killing of the badgers was funded by the farmers, whereas the monitoring and data analysis were funded by DEFRA.