It’s been a long time since I had space to blog but 2025 promises to be a more conducive year and I’m starting as I mean to go on.
January kicks-off with an open letter to Dr Christine Middlemiss, the UK’s Chief Veterinary Officer at Defra and a long-term advocate of badger culling as an effective control measure for eradicating bovine TB. The following was emailed to Dr Middlemiss yesterday. If a reply is received (unlikely), I’ll share that here. If the Area 67 cull is terminated early, I’ll be shouting it from the rooftops.
“Dear Dr. Middlemiss,
Figure 1 in the most recent APHA bovine TB epidemiology report for Hampshire shows the total number of new bTB incidents in 2023 was 25. The report goes on to say that between 2014 and 2018, there had been “no obvious trend” in the numbers of new bTB incidents in the county, and that between 2018 and 2021 there had been a “consistent downward trend”, with new incidents falling from 42 to 21.
You will be aware that, despite this falling trend, badger culling was introduced to Hampshire in the Autumn of 2021 in the form of the Area 56 cull. The rate of culling was materially increased in 2022 upon the creation of the Area 67 cull zone elsewhere in the county.
The APHA report for 2023 goes on to reveal that, far from there being an improvement in new bTB herd incidents over the 3 years since the introduction of badger culling, there has been a year-on-year increase in bTB incidents, with 22 recorded in 2022 and 25 recorded in 2023, reversing the previous “pre-cull” downward trend.
The Area 56 cull license has now expired after 4 years of, prima facie, entirely unnecessary badger slaughter, with no improvement in disease control whatsoever. The Area 67 license has one more year to run and more badgers are scheduled to be killed in that zone during 2025.
Since May 2021 you have, as the UK Chief Veterinary Officer, been empowered to bring an early end to intensive cull licenses issued in 2021 and 2022 after 2 or 3 years. You resisted calls to exercise this power last year and bring an early end to the Area 56 cull zone on the basis you believed it would be “sub-optimal” to do so for disease control. The recent APHA findings suggest that you were wrong. Between 2021 and 2023, at least 987 badgers were killed in Area 56 under license. We’ve yet to learn how many badgers were killed during 2024 as a result of your decision.
The Area 67 cull led to the death of at least 725 badgers from 2022 to 2023. Again, we’ve yet to be told how many badgers were killed in Area 67 during 2024.
In total, to the end of 2023, we know that at least 1,712 badgers have been shot dead in this county. The 2024 cull figures will likely push that figure beyond 2,000. And the disease control result? An increase in Hampshire bTB herd incident rates in each and every year since the badger cull was introduced at Defra’s behest.
I ask that you now exercise your power to bring an early termination to the Area 67 badger cull license without delay or reveal what data you are looking at which justifies the slaughter of any more members of this protected species in Hampshire.
I look forward to your considered response.
Yours sincerely
Nick Cole
North East Hampshire Badger Group”
Image courtesy of Matt Cole (@matt_wildlife)
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