Badgers live in complex social groups with strong territorial behaviour, and management interventions including culling disrupt their social structure in ways that affect individual and group welfare.
Badger welfare is compromised by both bovine TB disease - which causes a slow, debilitating illness - and by the management interventions used to control the disease. Licensed culling, when carried out by trained operators using appropriate firearms, should cause rapid death, but cage-trapping and subsequent shooting introduces capture stress. The perturbation effect - the dispersal and social disruption of surviving badger groups following culling - has welfare implications for displaced individuals and potential epidemiological implications for TB control. Vaccination is welfare-friendly by comparison and provides disease control without social disruption.