Badger culling as a bovine tuberculosis control measure in the UK has generated intense welfare and scientific debate about an intervention that kills hundreds of thousands of badgers annually.
Badger culling creates welfare harms that are both acute — individual badgers shot and dying from gunshot wounds — and chronic — the disruption of badger social groups (setts) that causes perturbation effects on surviving badgers who move away and potentially spread disease further. The wounding rate from free-shooting creates an invisible welfare problem: badgers that escape wounded die over variable periods from injuries that cannot be followed up by shooters in darkness across rough terrain. The scientific and welfare case for vaccination over culling is strong and growing: BCG vaccination is effective in reducing badger TB prevalence, creates no welfare harm, and does not generate perturbation effects. The continuation of culling despite this evidence represents a policy decision that prioritizes political and agricultural lobbying considerations over welfare and scientific evidence.