In England, badgers have been slaughtered in their hundreds of thousands since 2013 for the alleged role they play in spreading bovine tuberculosis (bTB) to cows. Now, freedom of information requests, seen by Protect the Wild, have revealed the state of biosecurity on farms participating in the cull. They show that a significant proportion of farms engage in practices that increase the risk of cow-to-badger contact. Moreover, the inspections show that farms are not universally adopting recommended measures to lower the risk of cow-to-cow transmission, which is the primary route of infection for bTB.
The badger cull is now in its thirteenth year. More than 230,000 badgers have been killed in over 70 areas of England since the policy was rolled out in 2013. Before the mass killing got underway, the UK had the honour of being home to a quarter of the European badger’s global population. No more. The government is yet to announce the kill figures for 2024. But they are likely to bring the total death toll to around a quarter of a million badgers. This means that successive governments have sanctioned the killing of well over half the estimated badger population in England.
Officials often justify the policy by citing the hardship that bTB causes to farmers. For instance, when announcing its new TB Eradication Strategy in August, which allows for continued culling potentially up to 2029, Food Security and Rural Affairs Minister Daniel Zeichner, said:
“Bovine tuberculosis has devastated British farmers and wildlife for far too long. It has placed dreadful hardship and stress on farmers who continue to suffer the loss of valued herds and has taken a terrible toll on our badger populations.”
Inspection reports
Cull policy rests on the idea that badgers play a significant role in disease transmission. That is not something that Protect the Wild agrees with (we discuss more below), but given the reported stress that bTB causes to farmers and the extent to which badgers have been blamed for the disease’s spread, many would expect biosecurity aimed at limiting contact between cows and badgers to be particularly stringent on cow farms. This should especially be the case in areas where badgers are being slaughtered in the name of tackling bTB.
In response to freedom of information requests, however, Natural England provided findings from hundreds of biosecurity inspections on farms participating in the badger cull. Protect the Wild has seen these reports, which show there is limited uptake on farms of stringent standards to avoid cows having contact with badgers.
Natural England responded to the first FOI request in February 2023 and a later one in March this year. Across the two requests, the agency provided results for over 800 inspections that had taken place between 2012 and 2024. The frequency of inspections was not evenly spread out, with over 100 inspections taking place in some years, while others saw only a dozen or so. Moreover, inspections appeared to grind to a near halt in the most recent years. Natural England said that only eight biosecurity inspections were conducted on farms participating in badger culls between February 2023 and mid-March 2025.
In the earlier years, the questions posed in the reports varied significantly, before settling into a regular pattern from 2016 onwards. Generally speaking though, these inspections assess the extent to which farms are following a five-point biosecurity plan recommended by the government and industry.
Limited uptake of badger-focused measures
Two of the points on this plan expressly relate to badgers. One highlights measures to restrict contact between cows and the wild animals, while the other spotlights how to manage food and water to limit badgers’ access to it.
Unsurprisingly, accessible food and water may attract badgers onto farms. So, feed stores should be secure – especially overnight – and cows need to be fed in troughs at height, according to guidance. Additionally, feed and water troughs should be regularly cleaned.
Protect the Wild has analysed the inspection findings to determine the uptake of these and other measures on farms. Where the reports indicated that measures were not applicable to some farms, we have excluded these premises from our calculations. This is in order to zoom in on the level of uptake by farms only where those measures are relevant to them. We also excluded unclear answers from our analysis, although these were very few and far between.
The 2012-15 inspection reports indicated whether feed and grain stores were secure on farms. In the first three years, this was conveyed with a straight yes or no answer, whereas in the latest year, farms were given a percentage grade between 0-100%, presumably to indicate more precisely how secure feed stores were.
Our analysis found that feed stores were secure on 72.5% of the farms inspected in 2012-14, with security lacking on 27.5% of premises. Similarly, around 76.5% farms inspected in 2015 were determined to be between 60-100% secure, with 23.5% recorded as 0-50%.
Except for 2013, inspections across 2012-22 also determined whether food stores were inaccessible to badgers overnight. Again, earlier inspections recorded compliance with yes-no answers, while percentage grades were used from 2015 onwards.
Almost 77% of premises inspected in 2012 and 2014 ensured their food stores were inaccessible to badgers overnight, with around 23% of farms failing to do so. Between 2015 and 2022, meanwhile, around 68% of inspected farms scored 100% on this question, 18% of farms scored between 60-90%, and 13.5% were found to be just 0-50% inaccessible.
The overwhelming majority of inspected farms did clean up feed spillages and regularly clean out their feed and water troughs on site, according to the reports. However, the percentage scores offer some nuance. For instance, in relation to regular cleaning of on-farm troughs, 49.5% of the farms inspected across 2015-2022 scored 100% on this, with around 42% scoring 60-90% and the rest (8%) achieving 0-50%.
Farms not secured against badger entry
Inspected farms often fell short on the recommendations to elevate cow food and their licks (the supplementary blocks provided to cows containing minerals like salt). In the 2012 and 2014 inspections combined, 51% and 38% of farms were found to put supplementary food and licks on the ground for cows, respectively, rather than raising them. Meanwhile, 57% of farms inspected between 2015 and 2022 scored only 0-50% on a question about whether they raised their food at least 80cm off the ground. Across the 2016-22 reports, 36% of farms scored 0-50% on the question of raising licks off the ground.
As with food, biosecurity recommendations call for licks to be raised so that badgers cannot access them.
Perhaps most startlingly, farms were typically not designed to limit badger access. Only 7% of the farms inspected across 2016-22 scored 100% on this subject, with 60% of them scoring 0-50%. Similarly, the whole farmyard was secure on only 8% of farms inspected in 2012, 2014, and 2015. The 2013 inspections asked only whether the cattle shed was secure, rather than the whole farm, which was the case in just 13% of farms.
Often, farms reported little sign of badger activity around their yard and buildings. As TB Hub (the “home of UK TB information”) has highlighted, however, a lack of sightings does not necessarily mean that badgers are not visiting the farmyard. This is why it recommends design measures such as narrowing gaps at the sides and bottom of gates and doors to stop badgers getting in.
On the other hand, farms frequently reported signs of badger activity in their fields. Even so, practices here also fell short. When it came to regular cleaning of in-field troughs, 37% of the farms inspected across 2015-2022 scored 100% on this, with almost 46% scoring 60-90% and the rest (around 16%) achieving 0-50%.
In the 2012 and 2014 inspections, meanwhile, about 22% and 33% of farms were found to place supplementary food and licks on the ground in fields for cows, respectively, rather than raising them. For the farms inspected between 2015 and 2022, 38% and 48% scored only 0-50% on questions about whether they raised their supplementary feed and licks at least 80cm off the ground in fields, respectively.
Inspections also indicated whether cows were excluded from field and wooded areas where badgers were known to be, such as in the vicinity of their setts and latrines. Even on this, there was not complete adherence to the recommendation that exclusion is advisable. In 2012 and 2014, almost 16% of inspected farms did not exclude cows from these areas. In 2013, 26.5% of farms said the same. 14% of the farms inspected across 2015-2022, meanwhile, scored 0-50% on this question.
Cow-focused biosecurity is vital
Considering the toll that the badger cull policy is exacting on wildlife, the variable uptake of recommended biosecurity measures on farms is quite scandalous.
Badgers are being killed in their tens of thousands each year across cull areas. This not only devastates badger groups, known as clans, but risks having knock-on effects that negatively impact wider wild communities and the ecosystems they inhabit.
As Protect the Wild readers will know, we are convinced that badgers do not play a significant role in bTB transmission, due to the mounting evidence that shows this to be the case (for the record, even if badgers did play a large role in bTB transmission, as a wildlife-first organisation, we would be advocating for a non-murderous way to handle the situation). For instance, recent analysis of the Randomised Badger Culling Trial (RBCT) data – the trial that effectively props up the cull policy – concluded that it shows badger culling has no effect on bTB in cows. “Badger culling is futile,” as the Oxfordshire Badger Group put it.
Like many others, including veterinarians, ecologists, and other wildlife advocates, Protect the Wild considers cow-focused measures to be the key to tackling bTB. Cow-to-cow transmission is widely considered to be the main route for bTB disease spread.
This is acknowledged even in analysis that has been used to justify the 13-year-long massacre of badgers. In other words, anyway you come at it, cow-focused biosecurity is critical in tackling the disease.
Farms falling short on cow-focused measures too
Despite this, the inspection reports reveal that a significant number of farms are falling short on cow-focused biosecurity measures too. Inspections across 2016-22 highlighted whether farms cleaned and disinfected the equipment they shared with other farms after using it. Those inspections found that around 21% and 55% of relevant farms did not clean and disinfect shared equipment, respectively.
Meanwhile, the 2014-22 inspections found that 22% of farms did not provide disinfection foot dips. These are cleaning devices for people to use to avoid disease spread via their footwear. As a veterinary consultant told Farmers Weekly, the dips send “a clear message about how serious that farm is about hygiene and biosecurity.”
Worse still, 2016-22 inspections evaluated whether farms were testing new cows entering their herds for bTB and isolating incoming higher-risk individuals. Almost 83% did not do post-movement testing. Meanwhile, around 28% of farms did not isolate all higher-risk cows before they entered the herd.
There is a bTB testing regime in place in England, with the rules varying depending on which bTB risk zone farms are in. This regime is not static and has changed over time, including by making post-movement testing mandatory for more farms in the years since these inspections were carried out. Even when this type of testing is not mandatory, however, it is recommended that farmers do it voluntarily. As TB Hub says, post-movement testing is “another line of defence” that helps to detect infections, including those that may have been missed in pre-movement testing. Likewise, isolating cows before integrating them with the herd is considered “good practice” and essential for high-risk individuals, TB Hub says.
The 2016-22 inspection reports also found that 77.5% of farms did not always boil or pasteurise ‘waste milk’ that they fed to calves. ‘Waste milk’ is the term used in farming to describe milk produced by cows that is not considered fit for human consumption because it may contain harmful pathogens and residues. Some farmers feed this milk to calves but it is an avenue through which bTB and other diseases can be transmitted. For this reason, biosecurity recommendations include only feeding boiled or pasteurised ‘waste milk’ to calves.
No moral or practical argument for culling
The inspection reports should be viewed as just the tip of a troubling iceberg. In its FOI responses, Natural England explained that “at least 5%” of cow farms participating in badger culls are subject to biosecurity inspections. It provided figures for the percentage of cow farms inspected between 2018 and 2022, which ranged from around 5% to 15%.
The inspection figures chime with findings in a paper published in January, for which researchers analysed other data from 2018/19 that showed the uptake of biosecurity measures on farms. They found uptake to be low for measures aimed at reducing contact between cows and badgers. The researchers also found voluntary post-movement testing to be even less common than the inspection results suggest, with only 1% of farms adopting this measure. Moreover, the paper highlighted that contact between herds was possible on 23% of the farms analysed. Herd-to-herd contact is another no-no when it comes to transmission risk.
In the paper, researchers also analysed relevant studies to measure the association between bTB in herds and uptake of biosecurity measures. They found “consistent evidence” that the risk of bTB was lowered when cow-focused biosecurity measures were in place.
The same was not true when it came to badger-focused measures, with evidence lacking that the risk of bTB was consistently impacted in a particular direction when measures focused on the wild animals were in place. The researchers argued that more studies are needed to understand the association between bTB in herds and the implementation of badger-focused biosecurity measures, considering the “contradictory evidence” available.
Of course, it could be that existing evidence does not consistently show that the risk of bTB is lowered when badger-focused biosecurity measures are in place because the wild animals do not play a significant role in bTB on farms.
