The Legality of Badger Gassing

Prof David Campbell

In responses to excellent comments made on an earlier blog about the pilot badger culls, I have given it as my opinion that the prospects for successful judicial review of those culls are poor. This opinion is based on the nature of judicial review and is not in any way a substantive defence of the culls or the policy of ‘eradicating’ bTB that lies behind them. This policy is irrational in every sense other than the sense which guides judicial review, and the culls have been so completely a failure that I do think their continuation in their present form, and certainly their extension in that form to other parts of the UK, could be subject to successful judicial review. The definition of insanity attributed to Einstein – of repeating the same action in the expectation of a different result – has become very clichéd, but this is only because, as with all the clichés one cannot avoid using, it is profoundly true. To go on with these pilot culls without very substantially amending them, or to extend them in their present state, would, in my opinion, invite judicial review that had a real prospect of success.

What Are the Lessons of the Badger Culls for Regulatory Theory? A Response to Comments

Prof David Campbell

In this post, Professor David Campbell responds to some of the issues raised in the discussion which his earlier post on the recent pilot badger culls generated below the line here, and on Twitter.

I am grateful to those who have commented on my views on the badger culls, and, in particular, for the suggestion that the cull (as carried out) might be regarded as a contravention of the Berne Convention on the Conservation of European Wildlife and Natural Habitats.

What Are the Lessons of the Badger Culls for Regulatory Theory?

Prof David Campbell

Even those, like myself, who in principle support the culling of wild animals in support of improving the welfare of livestock will be, as I have been, reduced to despair by the DEFRA Independent Expert Panel’s evaluation of the pilot badger culls in parts of Gloucestershire and Somerset which was published last month. DEFRA implemented the culls on the basis that they would be humane and effective, but, though it expresses itself in the most restrained fashion, the Panel shows that everything that was predicted to go wrong with the culls has gone wrong.