Pressure grows on BBC following impartial badger cull documentary

The Countryside Alliance, alongside several other leading rural organisations, has spoken out to express serious concern about Brian May’s BBC documentary on bovine TB and its potential impact on public perception and policy related to bovine TB control.

Responding to the documentary, which aired last Friday on BBC2, the Alliance released a public statement, reading: “As predicted, the BBC’s badger cull documentary contained little more than the opinion of its presenter – Brian May…. From the outset, it was clear the BBC had made a huge error in permitting a blatant partisan to front a current affairs programme on such a sensitive and emotive issue. By doing so, it has failed in its stated commitment to impartiality.”

In the week prior to the airing, the Alliance’s Chief Executive, Tim Bonner, wrote to BBC Director-General, Tim Davie, arguing the decision to use a blatant partisan [Brian May], was ‘fundamentally incompatible with the BBC’s obligation to be impartial’.

This letter and the subsequent news articles that followed prompted an industry-wide response from experts in the farming and veterinary sector. 

The documentary centred on heralding efforts at Gatcombe Farm in East Devon to eliminate bovine TB through enhanced blood testing of cattle and better slurry management. A preview version, shared with select media before broadcasting, claimed full success in ridding the herd of bovine TB by 2018 “without killing or vaccinating any badgers”.

This version, however, failed to mention that the farm had subsequently gone down with TB in July 2020, and again in May and September 2023. A report in The Daily Telegraph revealed that the BBC had hastily re-written the script and added this vital information, following external pressure. 

Disappointingly, though not wholly surprisingly, the re-write and important revelation about Gatcombe consisted of a mere few lines of text at the very end of the documentary.

The Alliance has yet to receive a response to our original letter from Tim Davie, but having viewed the documentary, we will be pursuing a formal complaint with the BBC.

Tim Bonner has already written about the difficulties of navigating the BBC’s complex complaints process, but we have every intention of pursuing a complaint based on the BBC’s own Editorial Guidelines that very clearly state: "Our audiences should not be able to tell from BBC output the personal opinions of our journalists or news and current affairs presenters on matters of public policy, political or industrial controversy".

On top of the Alliance’s complaint, the BBC faces further criticism from across the rural sector.

The Agriculture and Horticultural Development Board (AHDB) has raised concerns over ‘factual inaccuracies and the omission of key evidence’ in the programme and is set to issue a separate complaint.

NFU Cymru criticised the documentary for drawing conclusions from a single farm’s experience, which they believe is not scientifically credible. The union pointed to the need for a comprehensive approach that includes wildlife control, as supported by various peer-reviewed studies like the Birch, Godfray, and Downs reviews.

The British Cattle Veterinary Association (BCVA) said the documentary failed to present the most up-to-date evidence about the role of badgers in spreading the disease. Their statement added: ‘ We wish there had been an opportunity to share the science and evidence that the badger culls, along with a range combined strategies, have contributed to the 20 year all time low that we are currently experiencing.’