Brian May: Animal welfare community 'disappointed' by Labour’s badger cull stance
Sir Brian May has said the animal welfare community is “very disappointed” by the new Labour Government’s current stance on badger culling.
The Queen guitarist, 77, has been campaigning on the issue for more than a decade.
He is set to front a new BBC documentary in which he investigates how the bovine tuberculosis crisis in England and Wales can be dealt with without killing the mammals.
The illness, which affects cows, is known to devastate farm businesses. Badger culling has long been a part of the government response to the disease, despite criticism from wildlife and animal welfare campaigners.
Sir Brian said: “At the moment, it’s fair to say that the whole animal community is very disappointed in the way that the new Labour government is behaving because they came into power with a manifesto which said that they were going to stop badger culling because it was ineffective, that’s actually in the manifesto.
"They’re actually not stopping it, they’re allowing it to continue at least until 2026 under the existing licences."
Labour pledged in its 2024 manifesto to “work with farmers and scientists on measures to eradicate Bovine TB, protecting livelihoods so that we can end the ineffective badger cull”.
The government’s existing policy of intensive and supplementary control will end by January 2026.
Sir Brian added: “I don’t feel that the British public should allow this to happen, and I’m hoping there is a big outcry.”
In a new hour-long documentary, Sir Brian and his research team investigate how bovine tuberculosis is passed on – finding evidence to suggest that current methods used to detect the disease are “ineffective”.
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Speaking about their findings, Sir Brian said: “There is so much evidence to show that badgers have nothing to do with the spread of bovine TB, that there is no way you can justify it (culling).”
Animal charity the Badger Trust says that more than 230,000 badgers have been killed since the current cull began in England in 2013.
A Defra spokesperson said: “We recognise the devastating impact bovine TB has on the farming community which is why we are committed to beating this insidious disease.
“This government will roll out a TB eradication package including vaccination, herd management and biosecurity measures to achieve our objective of getting to bovine TB free status and end the badger cull.”
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