Nutrition

BVA President Sets Out Successes And Challenges For Vets In Scotland

Honoured guests, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the annual BVA Scottish dinner and a particularly warm welcome to our host this evening, John Scott MSP - we are incredibly grateful for your continued support to the BVA - and to the Environment Minister Roseanna Cunningham for kindly agreeing to address us this evening. But before I get into the meat of my speech this evening I do not want to miss the chance to think of one absent friend tonight. Anyone with half an eye to farming, veterinary work or animal health and welfare in Scotland will know the name Sandy Clark. Sandy was also the BVA"s link into Scotland and worked tirelessly for our profession for many years. I cannot stress enough the enormous hole Sandy has left and I am sure we would all wish he was still here with us. In some way I guess he is as we continue to carry on much of the momentum that bought to so much of all he touched. We must never forget his contribution in highlighting the importance of animal health and welfare in Scotland and placing the veterinary surgeon right at the heart of it. I also do not want to miss the chance to pass on all our congratulations to Simon Hall on his new post as Scottish CVO. Charles Milne has set a high benchmark for Simon to follow but I can assure him that the veterinary profession in Scotland and the BVA in London will do all they can to assist him in his new role. It is now a decade since the Scottish Parliament, National Assembly for Wales and Northern Ireland Assembly were established creating opportunities for national responses to national variations across a whole host of public policy platforms. One area where this approach has been particularly enthusiastically embraced is animal health and welfare. Unlike issues of law and order or education where Scotland in particular has gone its own way without looking back; I genuinely believe that devolved responses to rural affairs and animal welfare have offered the four countries of the UK the chance to watch and learn from each other through greater cooperation. I am particularly pleased that the veterinary profession has been able to maintain strong links across all four nations to provide the best possible service to our clients and the animals under our care. Devolution has allowed each nation to pursue an aim to become a shining example of good practice in its own area. I"m sure you"ll all have your own views on Scotland"s contribution, but I would particularly like to highlight the Scottish response to Bluetongue, where compulsory vaccination has been an incredible success story. Proving the British Animal Health and Welfare Strategy"s mantra that prevention is indeed better than cure, the compulsory programme produced a vaccination take up well in excess of the 80% target, although I understand the exact figure is not yet known. The BVA supported Scotland"s compulsory programme throughout the consultation and implementation and vets have played a major role in encouraging their clients to vaccinate stock. I certainly hope this strong response and significant financial investment by the Scottish Government reaps the rewards it deserves, but I must urge against any hint of complacency. Vaccination is only one part of the fight against the disease and I must take this opportunity to remind you all that importing livestock from mainland Europe, where Bluetongue is circulating, continues to be a risk. Another Scottish success story is the very low incidence of bovine tuberculosis (bTB). As you will know, England and Wales are developing their own approaches to stop the spread of this disease - a disease which poses a potential threat to human health. Badger vaccinations will be starting in six pilot areas of England next year and a targeted badger cull will be starting in west Wales shortly. The failure of the disease to take hold in Scotland can again be linked to the strong legislative stance taken by the Scottish Government on pre- and post-movement testing of animals coming into the country. Nigel Miller, vice-president of NFUS, announced in a newspaper article earlier this week that Scotland may apply for bTB-free status and we will watch further developments with interest. Delivering the President"s speech at last year"s dinner, Nick Blayney flagged up the ongoing difficulties in delivering the Scottish Rural Development Plan which, at that point, had somewhat stalled. He also congratulated ministers and the then CVO Charles Milne for their perseverance in carrying out negotiations with the European Commission. I am therefore very pleased to hear that the perseverance has paid off and earlier this year the Commission gave its approval to the Plan. This enabled the launch of the new Animal Welfare Management Programme encouraging farmers to take a more proactive approach to improving welfare standards. The new scheme has a greater emphasis on animal welfare and benchmarking than the original Animal Health and Welfare Management Programme and supports specific activities such as implementing biosecurity, preventing lameness, and controlling various diseases. We are pleased to see that vets will play a vital role in its implementation by undertaking animal welfare reviews, preparing management plans and agreeing specific activities for livestock producers to improve welfare. Working with their clients on farm, the local veterinary practitioner will have close knowledge of both the health and welfare of the stock and is best placed to implement these reviews. The BVA will actively encourage the practising veterinarians in Scotland to work with the farmers and the Scottish Government to bring benefits across the industry. As with all things relating to Europe, there are victories and there are frustrations. One current of complaint involves a European ruling that all sheep must be electronically tagged - a response to the foot and mouth outbreak in Britain in 2001. The new tagging regime, due to come into force in stages from 1st January, has already attracted cross-party condemnation here in the Scottish Parliament and discussions are ongoing with Defra and other member states to take the issue back to the European Agriculture Council. From the veterinary perspective, we of course support the need for effective traceability as a central requirement for disease control and maintaining public confidence in food safety. However, we share some of the industry"s concerns that the proposed scheme for individual electronic identification (EID) does not provide sufficient improvement over the current procedures to warrant the additional costs and practical difficulties. On the contrary, we are concerned that compulsory individual EID could worsen the situation by forcing sheep owners to divert already scarce res from veterinary advice on important aspects of animal health and welfare, which may impact on the availability, quality and safety of food. We continue to support the need to look again at these proposals. Although it is farm animal issues that hit the headlines, the majority of BVA members are in companion animal practice and much of our work therefore will focus on them. With that in mind I am delighted to highlight the Code of Practice for the Welfare of Equidae, which came into force in April this year. This is the first welfare code in Scotland made to benefit companion animals and we hope there"s more where this came from. There is an ongoing need to promote the responsibility of pet ownership for a wide range of animals. On horses, both the BVA and our specialist division BEVA (the British Equine Veterinary Association) have welcomed the requirement for foals to be microchipped and see this as an opportunity to ban hot branding as a means of identification. This is a position that may be controversial in some quarters, but we are clear that the welfare of the animal must dictate the policy. Another companion animal issue that is coming to the fore in Scotland is dangerous dogs, with the introduction of the Control of Dogs (Scotland) Bill by Christine Grahame, MSP for South of Scotland (who unfortunately is unable to join us this evening). Christine has taken on the work started by Alex Neil MSP to bring a bill that focuses on the animal"s behaviour rather than its breed. This is a fantastic example of BVA policy being put into practice and we"re grateful to both Christine and Alex for taking a huge leap forward in dealing with the inadequacies of the 1991 Dangerous Dogs Act. We wish you well with the passage of the bill. With the spiralling problem of status dogs - or weapon dogs I see they are now called - our hope must be that the other devolved governments will look again at their current legislative processes in this area and perhaps look to Scotland as a lead in this. Over the last couple of months the BVA has been consulting its members on Defra proposals for responsibility and cost sharing between the government and industry, and the specific proposal for a new body for animal health policy in England. The more I talk about the proposals in speeches and interviews, the more complex they become. I hope you have all had the chance to look at the proposals and if you haven"t I urge you to do so - both farmers and vets here in Scotland. This consultation has the potential to completely rewrite how policy is developed and how delivery systems are planned. It may well seem on the surface that the plans will only affect animal health and welfare in England but I assure you that the reality couldn"t be more different. I"d like to make it clear that the BVA has always supported the principle of sharing the responsibility and costs associated with disease management, as long as it comes with a genuine partnership between government and industry. As usual, our concerns about the current proposals lie in the detail of how it will be achieved. I could have devoted my entire speech to this issue, but I know we all want to

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