On Thursday, Defra secretary Liz Truss announced that the government plans to roll out its acutely controversial badger culling strategy further, after cull companies claimed succession meeting their targets in all three cull zones this year.

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• According to Defra, in West Somerset, where markspeople were aiming to shoot between 55 and 524 badgers, 279 were killed. Just under half were killed using the more expensive trap and shoot method;
• In West Gloucestershire, cull companies had a target of between 265 and 679 badgers. Shooters killed 432, of which 153 were killed using caged shooting;
• In the first year of culling in Dorset, shooters had to kill between 615 and 835 badgers. 756 were shot, the majority using trap and shoot.   

On Thursday, environment secretary Liz Truss said the badger culling policy is “Delivering results.” She continued, “We are on track to deliver TB freedom to more than half of the country by the end of this Parliament [2019] which will boost our trade prospects and is expected to deliver benefits worth millions of pounds to our dairy and beef industries. Badger control in the south west has been successful and we will enable it to take place over a wide number of areas next year.”

According to Defra, the Low Risk Area, identified in its TB eradication strategy, which covers around half of England, is on track to achieve officially TB-free status by the end of 2019.

The NFU welcomed the government’s announcement, with president Meurig Raymond saying, “It is clear that lessons have been learned from the first two years of the pilot culls and these have helped ensure the success of this year’s operations.”
 
The president added, “The desire to see culling carried out over a wider area of the country next year will be welcomed by farmers in areas where bovine TB is rife and where culling can play a vital role in disease control. We will continue to offer help, advice and support to farmers who want to apply for a cull licence in areas where the disease is endemic and that would benefit from culling.”

No evidence that culls are working
 
However, critics of the culls said the government’s publication of kill figures says nothing about the success rate of the culling strategy.

In addition to concerns about animal welfare, conservationists and independent scientists have pointed to badger population estimates, which were revised several times ahead of the first badger culls in Somerset and Gloucestershire, warning that the policy could lead to local extinctions of a protected creature. Critics have also said the government has no right to claim its culls are science led, as the two ‘trial culls’ which began in Somerset and Gloucestershire three years ago were ostensibly intended as four-year projects to test the efficacy of free-shooting badgers at night.

Speaking to Farming Online on Thursday, Badger Trust CEO Dominic Dyer said Defra’s publication of results on the day of Parliament’s Christmas Recess shows that the government has no confidence in its own ability to defend the cull on scientific grounds.

In a statement, the Trust said Defra's own TB stats don’t support claims by the government and NFU that culls are having a noticeable effect on the disease. Parliament's Environment Food and Rural Affairs Select (EFRA) Committee has said Defra must provide clear evidence that the badger culls are working as the latest figures show TB in cattle appears to be rising in and around the Somerset cull zone.    

The British Veterinary Association (BVA), which was formerly a staunch supporter of the badger culling policy, said it is disappointed that Defra plans to roll out the policy using the free-shooting method which was heavily criticised by the Independent Expert Panel tasked with assessing the first year of culling. Though the Association still supports “Targeted, effective and humane badger culling,” BVA president Sean Wensley said he remains concerned that Defra plans to relax licensing conditions to allow culls to go on for longer, which vets fear could lead to perturbation, when badgers flee their territory.

As well as the culling strategy, the government announced plans to improve cattle movement controls; Defra plans to introduce statutory post-movement testing next year for cattle entering the Low Risk Area to reduce the risk of importing TB-infected animals from higher risk areas and bring this part of England in to line with Scotland.

On Thursday, Defra also announced that it will be suspending the six private badger vaccination schemes it is overseeing in response to a worldwide shortage of the BCG vaccine. This follows an announcement from the Welsh government, which opted to pursue a programme of tight biosecurity measures and badger vaccinations instead of badger culling.