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Tuberculosis

Society should decide on UK badger cull

Nature volume 498, page 434 (2013)Cite this article

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As epidemiologists, we agree with the chief scientist of the UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs that badger culling is an “evidence-based” policy for controlling bovine tuberculosis (TB) in Britain (Nature http://doi.org/mxd; 2013). We disagree with other, less positive interpretations of that evidence (Nature 490, 317–318; 2012).

The evidence comes from a large-scale, long-term, government project — the Randomised Badger Culling Trial (RBCT). This roughly halved the incidence of TB in cattle herds in the culling area following 4–7 annual badger culls (H. E. Jenkins et al. PLoS ONE 5, e9090; 2010). The reductions in disease were not immediately evident owing to the long incubation period of bovine TB. There were also transient increases in incidence outside the cull areas, attributed to increased badger movements.

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  1. University of Edinburgh, UK

    Mark Woolhouse

  2. University of Cambridge, UK

    James Wood

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  1. Mark Woolhouse
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  2. James Wood
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Correspondence to Mark Woolhouse.

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Woolhouse, M., Wood, J. Society should decide on UK badger cull. Nature 498, 434 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/498434a

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