The badger cull policy in England, designed to reduce bovine tuberculosis, has been highly controversial, with animal welfare organisations arguing it causes significant badger suffering without sufficient conservation or disease control benefit.
Badger culling creates genuine welfare harm to badgers, who are intelligent and socially complex animals. Free shooting of badgers causes a proportion of non-instantly lethal shots resulting in suffering. Cage trapping causes significant stress to confined animals before killing. The perturbation effect — where culling disrupts badger territories and increases bovine TB spread in surrounding areas — means that culling can cause both badger welfare harm and increased cattle TB in adjacent areas. Cattle welfare from bovine TB is genuine — the disease causes significant suffering and death in infected animals. The welfare challenge is finding a disease control strategy that reduces both cattle and badger suffering simultaneously.