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
The Diddly Squat Farm, owned by TV presenter Jeremy Clarkson and a part of the ‘Clarkson’s Farm TV show’, was the subject last week of multiple media reports on positive bovine TB tests in their small cattle herd. Perhaps the Continue reading Is Diddly Squat Farm seeing the light on bovine TB testing and spread?→| 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
“The fall of the perturbation effect hypothesis” The new scientific Comment paper by Paul Torgerson and colleagues was published on 11 June in Royal Society Open Science (RSOS) (here), and is a comment on two 2024 re-evaluations of the Randomised Continue reading The 2025 ‘Torgerson’ scientific paper→| The Badger Crowd – standing up for badgers
A new article in Vet Times reports on the Torgerson et al (2025) paper published in Royal Society Open Science last month, that has prompted calls to stop all badger culling immediately. The badger…| The Badger Crowd - standing up for badgers
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 concerned with analysis of the Ranomised Badger Culling Trial (RBCT). Below, you can Continue reading What did The Royal Society peer-reviewer say about the new Torgerson et al (2025) paper?→| The Badger Crowd – standing up for badgers
In case you missed it, here is the Jane Dalton story from The Independent, Wednesday 11th June 2025: A prominent ecologist says an independent assessment of the latest study on badger culling is a “bombshell” takedown of the government’s evidence Continue reading Badger Bombshell!→| 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 response to the new scientific paper published in Royal Society Open Science today, Natalie Bennett has re-iterated the Green Party’s call to bring an end to badger culling. She is quoted as saying: “The Green Party has long Continue reading Green Party continues to call for end to badger culling→| 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
How’s it going? The quotes in the table below are taken from the APHA county epidemiology reports recently released. Progress is clearly not on target. As seen in Oxfordshire (see here), bTB …| 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
Things are starting to become slightly clearer as we near the point of discovery over the future of badger culling in England and beyond. Consultees to the online Defra Consultation questionnaire …| 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
