Badger culling ‘not an effective way of reducing TB in cattle’
A study which models the way in which TB spreads across Britain using data on cattle dating back to the 1990s found that few options could reverse annual increases in the disease.
The research, published in the journal Nature, found that only culling the whole herd when infection was found, vaccination of cattle, or additional national testing for infection would be effective in stemming the rise of the disease. But the researchers said whole-herd culling would initially involve a 20-fold increase in the number of cattle slaughtered and the measure was a “draconian” one, which they did not advocate.
