Calm down, most cows aren’t ‘killers’

There must be carnage in the countryside. That’s the only explanation for a stampede of anxious headlines about the danger of cows. ‘Are these the UK’s most dangerous animals,’ asked the front page of the Guardian this week alongside a picture of a bemused bovine. The Daily Star was at it too: the paper called cows ‘mooing killers’ and quoted a campaign group which suggested that the true number of cow attacks was being wildly underestimated. You’d be forgiven for thinking twice about going for a walk in the British countryside.

So let’s all take a deep breath before turning to the data: between March 2019 and March 2023, cows were responsible for 22 deaths in England, Scotland and Wales, or an average of around five a year.

These deaths are obviously a tragedy for those concerned, but is this a trend worthy of front page scare stories? If a truly horrifying death toll is what you’re after, then look at how many cows humans kill in the UK each year: 2.8