UK Official Defends Badger Cull

England’s badgers are once again in the firing line, as pilot culls to control the spread of bovine tuberculosis begin. As protesters descended on the nation’s capital last week, the chief scientific adviser of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), Ian Boyd, talked to Nature about why he thinks the cull is scientifically sound, what else will be needed to control this disease and what happened when he got the country’s leading experts together for a workshop meeting on this subject at the end of April.