Bovine Tuberculosis Control and Badger Culling

Carla Lockhart Excerpts

Monday 13th October 2025 Westminster Hall

[Irene Campbell (North Ayrshire and Arran) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered e-petition 700317 relating to Bovine Tuberculosis control and badger culling.

It is a privilege to serve under your chairship, Mr Stuart. The petition is titled “End the Badger cull and adopt other approaches to bovine TB control” and was created by Robert Pownall, founder of the group Protect the Wild. The number of signatures has reached more than 102,000, which is a great achievement. The petition states:

“The Government’s TB Eradication Strategy allows the continued killing of badgers, a protected species, until the end of this Parliament, despite the Labour manifesto calling the cull ‘ineffective.’”

It goes on:

“We believe the badger cull is unjustified and must end…We call for an immediate end to the cull and the implementation of cattle focused measures to control bTB, rather than what we see as scapegoating wildlife.”

It is important to note that badgers have been part of the British Isles for at least 250,000 years, and their presence is integral to maintaining our ecosystem balance. Bovine tuberculosis has had a terrible impact on the English countryside, wildlife and farmers. In the past 10 years, 278,000 infected cattle have been ordered to be slaughtered and more than 230,000 badgers have been culled.

I was surprised to learn that culled cows that are found to have one visible lesion can enter the food chain if the lesioned area is removed. Those with two or more lesions are deemed unsafe and cannot enter the food chain. Farmers receive compensation for the slaughtered cattle, and almost £23 million was paid out in 2024. As a side note, that may be something to consider in any future food-labelling schemes or policies, as I am sure many consumers would like to know whether they are eating a cow that had tuberculosis.

On 30 August 2024, the Government announced the start of work on their new strategy to tackle bovine tuberculosis, and the goal of achieving the status of England being officially free of bovine tuberculosis by 2038. I look forward to hearing more about that from the Minister.

One way to achieve that status is through an increase in vaccination. The Government said in their response to the petition that the

“development of a cattle vaccine…is at the forefront”

of their solutions. Field trials of the cattle Bacillus Calmette-Guérin vaccine and the companion test to detect infections among vaccinated animals—which is often called the DIVA test—have been ongoing since June 2021. To increase the roll-out and coverage of badger vaccination the Government also plan to establish a new badger-vaccinator field force, which will go hand in hand with a study to analyse the effect of badger vaccination on the incidence of TB in cattle.

It is important to note that the petitioner’s view is that vaccinating badgers is not the way forward as he believes it continues to push the belief that badgers are responsible for the spread of bovine TB, which he advises is not the case. As we will hear, scientific evidence such as that from Professor Mark Brewer backs up that position.

However, groups such as Wildlife and Countryside Link believe that badger vaccination is a useful tool for replacing badger culling. Their opinion is that as studies show that the majority of infection is from cattle to cattle, some is cattle to badger and a very small minority is badger to cattle, the focus should be cattle based, whether in relation to testing or vaccination, with badger vaccination being a supplementary tool.

The Badger Trust found that 94% of cases are spread from cow to cow and that more cattle were slaughtered in 2021 than in 2013, when the most recent cull started. Vaccinated badgers are also likely to be culled at times. Biosecurity is a fundamental approach to tackling bovine TB, but a survey of farmers carried out by the trust indicated that farm biosecurity was not widely employed by respondents.

The next steps could, then, focus heavily on enhancing biosecurity. In fact, the updated Godfray bovine TB strategy review concluded:

“As a decision has been made to phase out culling it is of great importance to develop effective non-lethal interventions to enable eradication, such as vaccination of badgers or reducing contact between badgers and cattle.”

It went on:

“An unfortunate consequence of the controversy around badger culling and the politicisation of the debate has been a deflection of focus from what can be done by the individual farmer and by the livestock industry to help control the disease. In particular, the poor take up of on-farm biosecurity measures and the extent of trading in often high-risk cattle is severely hampering disease control measures.”

Relevant biosecurity measures include the timely testing of cattle to reduce the risk from cattle movement and the use of multiple forms of testing that combine sensitivity and specificity. Good husbandry—for example, maintaining robust perimeter boundaries, using double fencing and avoiding common grazing and shared watercourses—should also be encouraged.

As a Scottish MP, I note that Scotland has had official tuberculosis-free status since 2009 and stopped badger culling in 2012. The Scottish Wildlife Trust states:

“The decision to begin mass badger culling was made despite the results of the Randomised Badger Culling Trial”

between 1998 and 2005,

“which concluded that ‘badger culling can make no meaningful contribution to cattle TB control in Britain’. The study found that reactive badger culling (culling badgers on and around farms with outbreaks of bTB) could actually increase incidences of bTB due to badgers that survive culling roaming beyond their usual range and therefore spreading bTB further”.

Similarly, Wales stopped culling in 2021 and instead focused on cattle and transmission routes. A Veterinary Record study of the impact of badger culling on bovine tuberculosis in cattle in the high-risk area of England claims:

“During the same period as this study, Wales achieved similar reductions in herd bovine TB incidence as England, through the introduction of improved bovine TB testing and other cattle measures, and without widespread badger culling. This suggests that bovine TB in cattle can indeed be controlled through cattle measures alone, as was predicted by the Independent Scientific Group in 2007.”

In 2022, the European Health and Digital Executive Agency found that 17 countries in Europe were designated as free from bovine TB, yet only three countries used the licensed culling of wildlife: England, Ireland and some parts of France. Many are of the view that badgers are not the primary cause of the spread of bovine TB and that culling them is a cruel and ineffective way to tackle the disease. Given all the aforementioned evidence, it is only fair to ask the Government to stop issuing new licences for culls and instead to focus on non-lethal intervention.

[Carla Lockhart (Upper Bann) (DUP)]

I differ slightly in my view. We certainly do not want badgers to be culled unnecessarily, but the evidence shows that a sustained badger cull does reduce TB. Northern Ireland has not had a badger cull and our TB compensation costs are soaring to more than £100 million this year. Reports from Somerset and Gloucestershire show that the badger cull reduced TB rates by 50%. Does the hon. Lady agree that although vaccination is good in theory—I want to get that point across—we need a cull to control TB in the first instance? Certainly, no one wants to see a badger die from TB, because it is quite horrendous.

[Irene Campbell]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention but I have to say that I disagree. The evidence is there for the badger cull to end immediately.