The London based Royal Society have published analyses that show how key aspects of methodology of the Randomised Badger Culling Trial (RBCT) published in Nature in 2006 were misdescribed and used …| The Badger Crowd - standing up for badgers
A Cumbria badger bloodbath At the Westminster Hall Debate on the 13th October, Angela Eagle the Defra Minister of State confirmed that the badger cull would come to an end in February 2026 in all but one area. Cull Area Continue reading Low Risk Area (LRA) culling must be scrapped for good→| The Badger Crowd – standing up for badgers
A quick reminder of why the RBCT is so important The Government’s English badger cull policy since 2013 has rested all but entirely on the RBCT analyses. It is the science that DEFRA has used to create policy and in Continue reading Government abandons RBCT as badger TB intervention evidence→| The Badger Crowd – standing up for badgers
The Westminster Hall debate of the Protect the Wild petition, held on 13th October, was a significant improvement on previous badger cull debates. The majority of voices spoke earnestly about a wish to stop badger culling and address TB testing Continue reading Westminster Hall debate on ending Badger Culling, 13 October 2025→| The Badger Crowd – standing up for badgers
It has been claimed that the disagreement about the Randomised Badger Culling Trials (RBCT), and what that central study tells us about whether badger culling can reduce bovine TB breakdowns in cat…| The Badger Crowd - standing up for badgers
A letter published last week in Vet Record (4/11 October) highlights further evidence against the culling of healthy badgers. The letter by Professor Paul Torgerson focuses on the recent scientific take-down of the supposed bovine TB ‘benefit’ from badger culling Continue reading Further evidence against the culling of healthy badgers→| The Badger Crowd – standing up for badgers
On Friday 26th September, Defra changed the “Bovine TB strategy review update” but simply made things worse by adding another layer of confusion. An error was reported as “a revision to a line of code”. In the document itself, the Continue reading Godfray Review 2025: Defra Revision? Correction? Or just further scientific howlers?→| The Badger Crowd – standing up for badgers
The Godfray review panel In December 2024, rather than have an independent review, Defra re-appointed some of its familiar advisors to update their 2018 Bovine TB Strategy Review. To consider “new…| The Badger Crowd - standing up for badgers
Why was the use of Gamma interfreon testing, alongside use of the tuberculin test (SICCT), under-declared in APHA’s central bovine TB control evaluation paper (Birch et al 2024) last year, and also in the newly published ‘Godfray’ report? A letter Continue reading 2038 Bovine TB targets on the scrap heap, with details of failed policy increasingly exposed→| The Badger Crowd – standing up for badgers
Panel Chair: Professor Sir Charles Godfray The long-awaited ‘Godfray’ report, a review of scientific evidence since 2018 concerning bovine TB in cattle, was published on 4th September. …| The Badger Crowd - standing up for badgers
On 19th August, Defra sent an email to ‘stakeholders’ announcing that as part of the work to refresh the bTB strategy, it will be “enhancing test sensitivity in cattle herds”. This is “to help identify infected cattle which may not Continue reading Cattle testing with Gamma interferon→| The Badger Crowd – standing up for badgers
The world watches and wonders…….. The interest and outrage generated by the English badger culls over the last thirteen years is huge and continues to grow. But as time has gone on, the…| The Badger Crowd - standing up for badgers
The parliamentary summer recess has begun. There can be no more Parliamentary Questions until the recall in September. Which is more than a shame, because there are questions that still need to be answered about the badger cull and bovine Continue reading Summer news roundup→| The Badger Crowd – standing up for badgers
On 30th July, Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Green received a reply to her written Parliamentary Question: “To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the paper by To…| The Badger Crowd - standing up for badgers
Reporting on badger cull science & legal challenges| The Badger Crowd - standing up for badgers
Badger blame folly continues undercover Have you noticed how quiet the NFU have become over badger culling since Labour came to power? Why could this be? Badger Politics In 2024 there was an agree…| The Badger Crowd - standing up for badgers
Professor Paul Torgerson The peer-reviewer of the new scientific paper, Torgerson et al 2025, published on June 11th is the Director of Biomathematics and Statistics Scotland (BIOSS). The paper is…| The Badger Crowd - standing up for badgers
Following on from our blog of September 23rd 2024, that reported on the uncertainties around the RBCT analyses, we are pleased to provide an important update. As Jane Dalton writes in The Independe…| The Badger Crowd - standing up for badgers
In March 2022 the Chief Veterinary Officer (CVO) Christine Middlemiss & Chief Scientific Advisor (CSA) Gideon Henderson joined Defra Media Centre in attacking a peer-reviewed, freshly published…| The Badger Crowd - standing up for badgers
Government to review the last six years of bTB science for its ‘refreshed’ bovine TB strategy On 30th January 2025, Defra issued Terms of Reference (here) for the ‘comprehensive new bov…| The Badger Crowd - standing up for badgers
Bovine TB failings in Oxfordshire and beyond in 2023 The “Year End Descriptive Epidemiology Reports” for Bovine TB control were published by APHA online on 24th October for the Edge Area coun…| The Badger Crowd - standing up for badgers
If it had been known last Christmas that a Labour government would be in power by July of this year, an imminent end of the cull would have been anticipated. With a public inquiry set up into how t…| The Badger Crowd - standing up for badgers
Who is really in charge of Bovine TB control at Defra? It’s very strange. The brand new Labour Government’s manifesto says that badger culls are ‘ineffective’, yet they will …| The Badger Crowd - standing up for badgers
The ‘targeted’ badger culling proposals of the last Government are rejected by the new Labour Government but the ‘ineffective’ badger culls still continue, pending a further Review. Lawyers acting …| The Badger Crowd - standing up for badgers
Brian May: The Badgers, the Farmers, and Me’ is a documentary that was aired on BBC2 at 9.00pm on Friday 23 August, and is now available on the BBC iplayer. Filmed over 4 years, the programme chart…| The Badger Crowd - standing up for badgers
On Thursday 18th July, as Keir Starmer visited Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire, the Oxfordshire Badger Group (OBG) presented a petition, with over 50,000 signatures to Oxford University School …| The Badger Crowd - standing up for badgers
This website has been reporting on the legal challenges to the badger culling policy and licences, and the science that has supposedly supported it since 2019. Over that time, there have been many …| The Badger Crowd - standing up for badgers
