Badger culling for bovine tuberculosis control creates significant welfare harm to badgers. The evidence base for culling effectiveness is contested and alternatives exist.
Badger culling creates clear individual animal welfare harm - cage trapping causes acute stress, and killing methods including shooting may wound rather than kill immediately. The scale of culling (over 200,000 badgers killed) represents enormous cumulative welfare harm to a protected species. The contested science around culling effectiveness - including the perturbation effect that may actually increase TB spread - means this welfare harm may be inflicted with limited benefit. The alternative of badger vaccination and cattle TB vaccination avoids lethal control while potentially achieving better disease control outcomes. The welfare case for transitioning from culling to vaccination is both scientific and ethical - if vaccination is equally or more effective at disease control, culling inflicts welfare harm without compensating benefit.