Badger cull: Labour promises to end controversial killing of native mammals to control bovine TB if elected

Labour says it will end England's controversial badger cull if it is voted into government in the next election.

The Conservative government recently announced a long-running cull to try and eradicate bovine tuberculosis - a bacterial disease which can be carried by badgers and spread to cattle - would no longer be phased out by 2025, the Independent reports. Environment and farming secretary Thérèse Coffey said she was "not going to be held by some artificial deadline" and that England would "keep culling for as long as it is the best way to do that".

According to the Badger Trust, more than 210,000 badgers have been killed since the current badger cull began in 2013. The Guardian reports that while shadow farming minister Daniel Zeichner would still push to make England bovine TB free by 2038, he would try and achieve it using other methods.

"I’ve met quite a few people, and they’ve absolutely convinced me that this is probably one of the most distressing issues people in the countryside come up against," he said. "So I’m hugely sympathetic to that. But I actually want to beat it. And we can do that with vaccines and biosecurity measures.”

Ruth Jones, Labour's shadow nature minister, added that her experience as an MP in Wales - where the cull was ended in 2012 - had shown that properly-funded vaccination schemes could work as an alternative to killing badgers. “We’ve got some good news on the badgers," she told The Guardian.

"It is a massive issue because unless you fund the vaccines we aren’t going to eradicate TB and it’s really, really important we do that. We are doing it in Wales and we will do it across the UK.”

The badger cull has long proved controversial in the UK, with numerous protests and campaigns to end the practice. Intensive culling in Oxfordshire has even lead activists to fear the local population could be "wiped out". The Oxfordshire Badger Coalition - which vaccinates badgers and works with landowners who want a kinder alternative - told NationalWorld's sister title the Banbury Guardian that an estimated 60% of the county was "a killing zone" for the native mammals.

The Tories have even faced backlash from its own MPs, with Tracey Crouch calling the cull "cruel, inhumane and unnecessary”. She said in the House of Commons: "Many badgers who are culled are actually TB-free... Over 77%” of badgers culled are “now being subjected to death by free shooting”, adding “inhumane cull methods use cause them fear and pain”.

The government said in 2020 that around 30,000 cattle still have to be slaughtered annually due to bovine TB, and argued that its prevention strategy was “founded in science”.

Badgers are the UK's largest remaining carnivores. The Peoples' Trust for Endangered Species says they were not initially afforded much in the way of protection in the UK, and numbers fell rapidly due to practices like trapping and badger-baiting. They were finally given their own protections in 1992 - although they may still be culled on farms under special licence.