The European Badger has become the subject of huge controversy in Britain in recent years. In 2013, against strong opposition from the public and scientific community, the British Government, instigated a "pilot" cull in Gloucester and Somerset as they capitulated to anecdotal claims from the farming community that Badgers were the main cause of the spread of Bovine Tuberculosis (bTB). Data gathered during the cull found that over 83% of the Badgers killed were completely free of any bTB infection and GPS-tracking studies of individual Badgers showed that they never approached closer than 20m to livestock in the fields and usually prefered to stay at least 50m away from any cattle, proving claims from the farming community that it was direct contact from Badgers that is responsible for the rise and spread of bTB completely unfounded.
In fact, it has been widely known since the 1980's that the main route of bTB transmission is through "kissing cows" as they nuzzle each other over fences, thus placing the blame for the current situation firmly at the farmer's feet. Also, since Badgers actively go out of their way to keep their distance from cattle, the only possible way for bTB to be passed to a cow from a badger is through the ingestion of contaminated grass, but even if the badger's urine contained 300, 000 Mycobacterium bovis bacillum (the bacteria that causes bovine TB) per millilitre, the cow would still need to ingest over 3ml of Badger urine to receive a dose high enough to become infective. Just why the Badger is being blamed so vehemently by the National Farming Union has absolutely nothing to do with science and the Badger is being used purely as a political pawn. After starting down the route of supporting a cull under the pressure of the NFU and powerful landowners, the government has left itself in the situation that it cannot back down from its stance without first admitting that it was completely the wrong decision and a total failure, something the vast majority of politicians will never do.
As a consequence, despite the overwhelming scientific evidence to the contrary, the government has continued to claim the cull is a sucessful method of controlling bTB and has extended the cull area to include a total of 10 areas in Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Somerset, Gloucestershire and Herefordshire and has resulted in the deaths of nearly 15,000 badgers up to the end of 2016. More than half of these were killed by the method of free-shooting, a method widely condemned by veterinary experts as being inhumane. At the time of writing (July 2017), it is unlikely that the government will see sense and this unfounded, unscientific and unethical slaughter of one of Britain's most iconic and beautiful animals will continue for the foreseeable future.
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