We're keeping up pressure on Oxford Scientists to speak up for badgers. Please read & like our letter published in the Oxford Times this weekend. We hope the University's students and staff take note !
https://x.com/ProtectTheWild_/status/1817508046060282360
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Our letter:
Oxford University is complicit in driving badgers to local extinction
Oxford University has the unenviable accolade of being the birthplace of the controversial badger cull. Scientists from Oxford conducted the Randomised Badger Culling Trial (RBCT - 2006) and concluded that badgers pass bovine TB (bTB) to cattle. Their work is used to justify killing badgers on an industrial scale. Since 2013 over 230,000 badgers have been killed at a massive cost to the taxpayer. Yet there is no convincing evidence that driving badgers to the point of local extinction has helped to reduce bTB in the herd. The Labour Party manifesto promised to end the ‘ineffective’ cull. We fear they may concede to the farming lobby and allow existing cull licences to run. If so, we face a further 2 years of culling in which over 30,000 more badgers may be slaughtered.
An important, peer reviewed scientific paper “Absence of effects of widespread badger culling on tuberculosis in cattle” by Torgerson et al has just been published^ It found that the methods used to analyse the RBCT data were seriously flawed . Proper analysis finds “there was insufficient evidence to conclude RBCT proactive badger culling affected bTb breakdown incidence” In other words, there is no scientific evidence to justify killing badgers in order to control the disease. Better cattle control measures are needed.
Oxfordshire Badger Group handed in a petition of over 50,000 signatures to the University School of Biology last week. We’re waiting for the eminent scientists involved in the RBCT to break their silence, accept the new evidence and join us in demanding an immediate end to the cull. Has this proud centre of academic excellence sunk so low that it’s researchers refuse to defend their work in public?