The Tory government announced in September that it had approved the further killing of tens of thousands of badgers in England. According to the Badger Trust, since 2013 over 100,000 badgers – a supposedly ‘protected’ species – have been killd in the country.
The justification for that killing, or ‘culling’ as advocates of the slaughter prefer to say, is that badgers transmit tuberculosis (TB) to cows. So, to tackle TB in the latter, the argument goes that the former must die. A government funded survey, however, casts serious doubt on that argument. Moreover, though that survey has only recently come to light, researchers completed it in summer 2018.
