The bovine tuberculosis badger culling programme in England has culled hundreds of thousands of badgers, generating intense welfare and scientific debate about the effectiveness and ethics of the approach.
Badger culling raises acute welfare concerns at the individual animal level: field shooting of badgers at night by shooting teams results in wounding rates where animals are not immediately killed and die slowly. Licensed culling requires minimum 90 percent kill rates over 6 weeks but monitoring welfare of shot animals is impractical in field conditions. Cage trapping followed by shooting in the trap is more humane but more resource-intensive. The scale of the cull — hundreds of thousands of animals — multiplies individual welfare incidents substantially. The scientific debate about culling efficacy and the availability of vaccination as a welfare-better alternative continue to fuel calls for policy reform. Many vets and scientists advocate for a vaccination-first approach.