European badgers are implicated in bovine tuberculosis transmission to cattle, leading to controversial culling programs. Evidence on culling effectiveness is contested while welfare harms to badgers are well-documented.
Badger culling causes direct welfare harms that are difficult to justify given contested evidence of effectiveness. Cage trapping followed by shooting causes acute stress during confinement and potential suffering if shooting is not immediately lethal. Free-shooting — shooting badgers as they emerge from setts — requires high marksmanship accuracy to avoid wounding. Animals that are wounded may escape and die slowly. The proportionality of welfare harm to conservation benefit is contested: independent scientific assessment has questioned whether current cull scales achieve the bTB control benefits that would justify large-scale welfare harms to a protected species. Vaccination represents a welfare-superior alternative currently being deployed more widely. Cattle testing and movement controls address the cattle-side of bTB transmission and have driven major improvements in some high-risk areas.