Oxfordshire farmer Jeremy Clarkson has been left puzzled by the failure of what a badger campaign group calls a “cruel, costly” policy.
The star of the Amazon Prime series Clarkson’s Farm announced Tuberculosis (TB) had broken out at Diddly Squat Farm in Chadlington on Thursday (July 31).
He said: “Bad news from Diddly Squat. We’ve gone down with TB. Everyone here is absolutely devastated.”
He then added later on in the afternoon: “I should clear this up, really. It’s Bovine TB that we have.
“It doesn’t affect people, just our poor cows.”
Bovine TB can be disastrous for farming communities, running through herds of cows, killing many.
READ MORE: Diddly Squat Farm Shop opening update after TB outbreak
Oxfordshire is an “edge area” for the disease, meaning it is a buffer zone between high-risk and low-risk areas so most herds are subject to six-monthly TB tests by default.
One of the ways TB outbreaks are controlled is through badger culls, stopping the spread from animal-to-animal which are allowed under UK law.
The effectiveness of these measures is widely disputed and Mr Clarkson, who previously was supportive of the culls, seems to have become more sceptical of their impact.
Speaking on Times Radio, he said: “The cull here was pretty heavy and a lot of badgers went off to meet their maker.
“So, you would imagine with the numbers so low that TB would be halted and yet it hasn’t been.”
He went on to say that his farm isn’t alone with this problem and others nearby also have suffered an outbreak.
In fact there have been several cases in Oxfordshire near Diddly Squat Farm in recent weeks, according to ibTB, a mapping platform for the disease in England and Wales.
Mr Clarkson added: “So, you could say the badger cull stopped in October and everyone’s now getting TB. That’s because we’re not culling badgers anymore.
“Or you could look at it the other way. The numbers are low so it should have cut the instances of TB down and it doesn’t seem to have done that.
“I’m struggling to get my head around that at the moment.”
Reacting to these developments, the Oxfordshire Badger Group (OBG) called the culling of badgers a “cruel, costly and failed policy”.
“There is no evidence that badger culling has any impact on reducing bovine TB,” a spokesperson said.
They said that almost a quarter of a million badgers have been killed since the cull began in England in 2013 “without scientific evidence”.
“60 per cent of Oxfordshire is in the cull area”, added OBG.
“And 10,000 badgers have been killed since culling began in Oxfordshire in 2020.”
Instead of the cull the group suggested implementing “cattle based measures”.
These include properly regulated cattle movement, improved biosecurity and a reliable testing system.
The badger group has regularly campaigned in Oxford and the wider county.
This included an open letter and petition to scientists at Oxford University last year, calling for them to speak up against badger culling.
Members of the group also delivered an open letter calling for Oxford University academic Professor Sir Charles Godfray to step down from a review into the spread of bovine-TB.
They stood with a petition outside the Oxford Martin School in March to hand over a petition dressed in their traditional badger costumes.
