The badger culling programme in England has been highly controversial, with animal welfare concerns about the culling methods used alongside the scientific debate about its effectiveness.
The badger culling programme raises acute welfare concerns about the method of killing, alongside the broader conservation and scientific debate about cull effectiveness. Free shooting of badgers in the dark results in a significant proportion of animals being wounded but not immediately killed, causing suffering before death or escape and subsequent lingering injury. Independent monitoring found that substantial proportions of culled badgers were not killed humanely. Cage trapping followed by shooting is more reliably humane but more resource-intensive. Vaccination programmes provide a welfare-positive alternative that does not require killing badgers at all.