Voices from the London march against the badger cull

Those recorded included people on the march itself and representatives of several of the organisations behind it: Blue Badger, the League Against Cruel Sports and the Hunt Saboteurs Association, along with the broadcaster Bill Oddie.

The cull was intended to reduce the transmission of bovine tuberculosis to cattle by removing badgers from defined areas. It was contested on two distinct grounds, and the interviews caught both.

The first was scientific: whether culling reduces bovine TB in cattle at all. Large-scale trial work had produced complicated results, including evidence that disturbing badger populations can increase the movement of infected animals and so spread infection beyond the culled area. The policy proceeded while that argument was unresolved.

The second was ethical, and drew a different constituency, people opposed to killing a protected native mammal on a large scale regardless of what the epidemiology showed.

Those two objections do not always sit comfortably together, since one is contingent on evidence and the other is not. A recording made among the marchers captures that mixture more honestly than a summary of the campaign’s position would.