Badgers in the UK face lethal culling as a bovine TB control measure, raising profound welfare questions about the ethics of killing wildlife for disease management when vaccination alternatives exist.
The badger culling programme is one of the most welfare-controversial wildlife management policies in recent UK history. The welfare harm is significant and documented: a substantial proportion of shot badgers are wounded rather than killed outright, dying slowly from gunshot injuries. The policy's scientific justification is disputed, and vaccination alternatives exist that could achieve TB control goals without mass killing. From a welfare perspective, any policy that knowingly inflicts suffering at scale — particularly using methods with known high wounded-but-not-killed rates — requires extraordinarily strong justification. The availability of vaccination as an alternative makes the welfare calculus particularly challenging to defend.