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News & Reports BVA
Maintaining local practices vital to TB control, says BVA President BOVINE TB, veterinary surveillance and pet travel were among the subjects discussed by Robin Hargreaves, the BVA President, in his speech to the BVA’s annual dinner in London last week. Mr Hargreaves also raised the issues of 24-hour emergency cover, compulsory microchipping of dogs, slaughter without stunning and the potential overproduction of veterinary graduates. The dinner was held at One Great George Street in London on February 25. Similar events are held in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland each year, with the aim of bringing matters of interest to the BVA and the veterinary profession to the attention of policymakers and others with an interest in agriculture, animal health and animal welfare. On bovine TB, Mr Hargreaves considered both the current plans to procure the services of Official Veterinarians via a competitive tendering process and the ongoing fight to control the disease.
236 | Veterinary Record | March 8, 2014
Robin Hargreaves (centre), the BVA President, with Nigel Gibbens (left), the Chief Veterinary Officer, and Lord de Mauley, parliamentary undersecretary of state at Defra, at the BVA’s London dinner last week
The BVA was not convinced that tendering was the only available route to procure TB testing services, he said. However, following a recent meeting with Defra, it was clear that both the BVA and the Government wanted the same things – a system that
recognised the importance of maintaining local veterinary practices; a system that reinforced the value of the relationship between local vets and their farm clients; and a system that reflected the Government’s policy priority of supporting small businesses.
Downloaded from http://veterinaryrecord.bmj.com/ on June 29, 2015 - Published by group.bmj.com
News & Reports ‘What we don’t yet know is how those elements will be reflected in the tendering process and we are looking to the Government to do all they can to ensure contracts are awarded on quality, as well as price,’ said Mr Hargreaves. Regarding the control of bovine TB, he said that it was not possible to prejudge the findings of the Independent Expert Panel (IEP), which had been established to assess the safety, efficacy and humaneness of the two pilot badger culls carried out in Somerset and Gloucestershire last year. Nor was it possible to say what the BVA’s position would be once it had had time to analyse the IEP’s findings. ‘Our position has always been based on the available scientific evidence, and will continue to be so,’ he stressed. Mr Hargreaves added that ‘Some in the media are painting a picture in which policymakers have a straight choice between vaccinating badgers and culling them. That picture is false. And it is damaging.’ Badger vaccination clearly had a role to play in the eradication of bovine TB, he said, but there was no evidence to suggest that it was currently a viable alternative to culling in the fight against bovine TB in cattle in endemic areas. It was also wrong to suggest that any of the measures needed
to tackle the disease could be successful in isolation. ‘We fully recognise that this is a highly emotive subject and our own position was not taken lightly,’ said Mr Hargreaves. ‘But it is essential that the public debate is well informed and based on fact. We will continue to do the best we can to add the veterinary perspective to the conversation.’ On surveillance, he said that the BVA recognised the opportunities for veterinary practices in the AHVLA’s new structure for the provision of postmortem examination services and surveillance. It also understood the logic of bringing expertise and systems together and the need to save money in difficult economic times. However, it could not fully support the new structure until the assumptions behind it had been tested. ‘If the new system isn’t ready in time or fails in some way, the cost of a disease outbreak could far outweigh any savings,’ he warned.
Welfare at slaughter
Non-stun slaughter attracted much comment and concern from BVA members, Mr Hargreaves reported. However, he said, while the BVA had a huge amount of political support for its stance on the issue, the Government felt that its hands were tied.
‘That is why we have been seeking to find practical solutions. While they wouldn’t eliminate the problem they might at least reduce the welfare harm caused by slaughter without stunning. ‘For these animals we want to see postcut stunning to reduce the individual harm. And we want to see a system of labelling that would reduce the likelihood of products entering the mainstream market, which in turn would reduce the total number of animals affected. ‘We also seek to educate and inform. As the recent House of Lords debate on this issue revealed, scientific fact can be obfuscated by entrenched belief. We want to move the discussion away from one about religious freedoms, and towards one about consumer choice and animal welfare.’
Pet travel
Turning to small animal issues, Mr Hargreaves raised concerns about a ‘worrying and unintended consequence’ of the harmonisation of European pet travel rules – namely, the abuse of the non-commercial rules by organised gangs looking to make money by bringing puppies into the UK with the intention of selling them to unsuspecting families. With this came the increased risk of rabies, echinococcosis and other diseases
March 8, 2014 | Veterinary Record | 237
Downloaded from http://veterinaryrecord.bmj.com/ on June 29, 2015 - Published by group.bmj.com
News & Reports crossing the UK’s borders. ‘We absolutely don’t want to be alarmist about these risks, but once criminal activity is involved, all bets are off,’ he said. The BVA supported moves towards a minimum age of vaccination of 12 weeks so that no puppy could come into the UK until it was at least 15 weeks old. The BVA was delighted that, as in Northern Ireland, the microchipping of dogs was to be made mandatory in England and Wales in the next few years. ‘With Scotland in the process of consulting, we may soon get a full house,’ Mr Hargreaves remarked. However, before the legislation came into force, greater efforts were needed to get accurate information out to owners about the right way to get their dogs microchipped and to stress that microchipping was only as effective as the information held on a database. ‘We have to steer people towards reputable suppliers and implanters and away from backstreet deals and online offers that might not be linked to a database,’ he said. ‘And we have to get the regulations in place as soon as possible that will support responsible microchip databases.’ Mr Hargreaves said that pet owners also needed to understand what they could reasonably expect from the veterinary profession when it came to the provision and cost of 24-hour emergency cover. ‘Our willingness to provide 24/7 care and attend emergencies when needed is one of the strongest reasons that people place their trust in us,’ he said. ‘And that is one of the reasons that BVA supports the principle of the obligation. But its delivery has to be realistic.’ He said that a system was needed that would allow animal suffering to be relieved in the shortest practical time and that did not undermine those practices whose internal
structures had been built up to support 24-hour care. Another issue of concern was the ever-increasing number of veterinary graduates entering the marketplace. With the University of Surrey taking in its first cohort of veterinary students later this year, and with news that the universities of Aberystwyth and Ulster were exploring the possibilities of delivering veterinary science courses, worries existed about how the profession could continue to support the practical elements of the veterinary degree courses by providing extramural studies placements. ‘Ultimately, market forces will dictate decisions on whether or not new veterinary schools open and whether the existing schools expand their intake,’ said Mr Hargreaves. ‘But unless we can quite quickly steer people into different areas of work and open up new and attractive employment opportunities for veterinary graduates there is a significant potential for overproduction, underemployment and downward pressures on salaries.’ Expectations needed to be managed from the outset, he believed, to ensure that the next generation of veterinary students realised that the veterinary marketplace was changing rapidly.
‘More for less’
Lord de Mauley, parliamentary undersecretary of state at Defra, also spoke at the dinner. He emphasised the need to tackle some difficult issues ‘against the backdrop of a changing and resourceconstrained environment’. ‘We have to find where efficiencies can be made and how we can deliver more for less,’ he said, suggesting that ‘The future role of the private vet in surveillance and TB control are good examples of the potential opportunities for us to do this by working together.’
The Government was seeking to update its relationship with vets to deliver animal health and welfare policies in a more effective and efficient way. The Veterinary Delivery Partnership Programme would award contracts to supply a flexible package of veterinary services and would also give an opportunity to enhance quality control and market-test the price paid by taxpayers. ‘We are designing the process in such a way that local practices should be able to tender jointly for the work, provided they can put in place the necessary quality assurance and are willing to accept a fairly competed price,’ said Lord de Mauley. ‘A new approach to training and appointing individual vets to perform statutory work is also being introduced. We are looking for a considerable improvement in the quality of training and level of support provided to individual vets and their employers.’ Regarding surveillance, Lord de Mauley said that vets were a vital source of knowledge and intelligence through their contacts with animals and animal keepers. ‘You are often the first to spot emerging problems and any risks associated with new practices,’ he said. ‘The challenge is in capturing that knowledge and feeding it back into the surveillance system. It will be important to continue working together to ensure that scanning surveillance remains fit for purpose and cost-effective in the future.’ On pet travel, he said that government relied on vets to fill out pet passports correctly, explain why they were important and encourage owners to get the right treatments for their pet for their journey. ‘Vets also play an important role in reporting any pets which have been imported without the correct paperwork, encouraging people to buy pets from reputable sources and in raising awareness about the dangers of buying a cheap pet from abroad without the right paperwork. We need your feedback on potential issues of this sort. But we must also keep the risk in context and ensure any response is proportionate.’ A revised EU pet travel regulation would come into effect at the end of this year, he said. The key elements of the existing scheme would remain, but new measures would strengthen the integrity of the certification process carried out by authorised vets across the EU, enhancing the security of the pet passport and improving the passport’s traceability. ‘The challenges of safeguarding animal health and welfare continue, as well as the challenge of doing this more efficiently,’ he concluded. doi: 10.1136/vr.g1927
238 | Veterinary Record | March 8, 2014
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Maintaining local practices vital to TB Control, says BVA President Veterinary Record 2014 174: 236-238
doi: 10.1136/vr.g1927 Updated information and services can be found at: http://veterinaryrecord.bmj.com/content/174/10/236.2
These include:
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Notes
To request permissions go to: http://group.bmj.com/group/rights-licensing/permissions To order reprints go to: http://journals.bmj.com/cgi/reprintform To subscribe to BMJ go to: http://group.bmj.com/subscribe/
News & Reports BVA
Maintaining local practices vital to TB control, says BVA President BOVINE TB, veterinary surveillance and pet travel were among the subjects discussed by Robin Hargreaves, the BVA President, in his speech to the BVA’s annual dinner in London last week. Mr Hargreaves also raised the issues of 24-hour emergency cover, compulsory microchipping of dogs, slaughter without stunning and the potential overproduction of veterinary graduates. The dinner was held at One Great George Street in London on February 25. Similar events are held in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland each year, with the aim of bringing matters of interest to the BVA and the veterinary profession to the attention of policymakers and others with an interest in agriculture, animal health and animal welfare. On bovine TB, Mr Hargreaves considered both the current plans to procure the services of Official Veterinarians via a competitive tendering process and the ongoing fight to control the disease.
236 | Veterinary Record | March 8, 2014
Robin Hargreaves (centre), the BVA President, with Nigel Gibbens (left), the Chief Veterinary Officer, and Lord de Mauley, parliamentary undersecretary of state at Defra, at the BVA’s London dinner last week
The BVA was not convinced that tendering was the only available route to procure TB testing services, he said. However, following a recent meeting with Defra, it was clear that both the BVA and the Government wanted the same things – a system that
recognised the importance of maintaining local veterinary practices; a system that reinforced the value of the relationship between local vets and their farm clients; and a system that reflected the Government’s policy priority of supporting small businesses.
Downloaded from http://veterinaryrecord.bmj.com/ on June 29, 2015 - Published by group.bmj.com
News & Reports ‘What we don’t yet know is how those elements will be reflected in the tendering process and we are looking to the Government to do all they can to ensure contracts are awarded on quality, as well as price,’ said Mr Hargreaves. Regarding the control of bovine TB, he said that it was not possible to prejudge the findings of the Independent Expert Panel (IEP), which had been established to assess the safety, efficacy and humaneness of the two pilot badger culls carried out in Somerset and Gloucestershire last year. Nor was it possible to say what the BVA’s position would be once it had had time to analyse the IEP’s findings. ‘Our position has always been based on the available scientific evidence, and will continue to be so,’ he stressed. Mr Hargreaves added that ‘Some in the media are painting a picture in which policymakers have a straight choice between vaccinating badgers and culling them. That picture is false. And it is damaging.’ Badger vaccination clearly had a role to play in the eradication of bovine TB, he said, but there was no evidence to suggest that it was currently a viable alternative to culling in the fight against bovine TB in cattle in endemic areas. It was also wrong to suggest that any of the measures needed
to tackle the disease could be successful in isolation. ‘We fully recognise that this is a highly emotive subject and our own position was not taken lightly,’ said Mr Hargreaves. ‘But it is essential that the public debate is well informed and based on fact. We will continue to do the best we can to add the veterinary perspective to the conversation.’ On surveillance, he said that the BVA recognised the opportunities for veterinary practices in the AHVLA’s new structure for the provision of postmortem examination services and surveillance. It also understood the logic of bringing expertise and systems together and the need to save money in difficult economic times. However, it could not fully support the new structure until the assumptions behind it had been tested. ‘If the new system isn’t ready in time or fails in some way, the cost of a disease outbreak could far outweigh any savings,’ he warned.
Welfare at slaughter
Non-stun slaughter attracted much comment and concern from BVA members, Mr Hargreaves reported. However, he said, while the BVA had a huge amount of political support for its stance on the issue, the Government felt that its hands were tied.
‘That is why we have been seeking to find practical solutions. While they wouldn’t eliminate the problem they might at least reduce the welfare harm caused by slaughter without stunning. ‘For these animals we want to see postcut stunning to reduce the individual harm. And we want to see a system of labelling that would reduce the likelihood of products entering the mainstream market, which in turn would reduce the total number of animals affected. ‘We also seek to educate and inform. As the recent House of Lords debate on this issue revealed, scientific fact can be obfuscated by entrenched belief. We want to move the discussion away from one about religious freedoms, and towards one about consumer choice and animal welfare.’
Pet travel
Turning to small animal issues, Mr Hargreaves raised concerns about a ‘worrying and unintended consequence’ of the harmonisation of European pet travel rules – namely, the abuse of the non-commercial rules by organised gangs looking to make money by bringing puppies into the UK with the intention of selling them to unsuspecting families. With this came the increased risk of rabies, echinococcosis and other diseases
March 8, 2014 | Veterinary Record | 237
Downloaded from http://veterinaryrecord.bmj.com/ on June 29, 2015 - Published by group.bmj.com
News & Reports crossing the UK’s borders. ‘We absolutely don’t want to be alarmist about these risks, but once criminal activity is involved, all bets are off,’ he said. The BVA supported moves towards a minimum age of vaccination of 12 weeks so that no puppy could come into the UK until it was at least 15 weeks old. The BVA was delighted that, as in Northern Ireland, the microchipping of dogs was to be made mandatory in England and Wales in the next few years. ‘With Scotland in the process of consulting, we may soon get a full house,’ Mr Hargreaves remarked. However, before the legislation came into force, greater efforts were needed to get accurate information out to owners about the right way to get their dogs microchipped and to stress that microchipping was only as effective as the information held on a database. ‘We have to steer people towards reputable suppliers and implanters and away from backstreet deals and online offers that might not be linked to a database,’ he said. ‘And we have to get the regulations in place as soon as possible that will support responsible microchip databases.’ Mr Hargreaves said that pet owners also needed to understand what they could reasonably expect from the veterinary profession when it came to the provision and cost of 24-hour emergency cover. ‘Our willingness to provide 24/7 care and attend emergencies when needed is one of the strongest reasons that people place their trust in us,’ he said. ‘And that is one of the reasons that BVA supports the principle of the obligation. But its delivery has to be realistic.’ He said that a system was needed that would allow animal suffering to be relieved in the shortest practical time and that did not undermine those practices whose internal
structures had been built up to support 24-hour care. Another issue of concern was the ever-increasing number of veterinary graduates entering the marketplace. With the University of Surrey taking in its first cohort of veterinary students later this year, and with news that the universities of Aberystwyth and Ulster were exploring the possibilities of delivering veterinary science courses, worries existed about how the profession could continue to support the practical elements of the veterinary degree courses by providing extramural studies placements. ‘Ultimately, market forces will dictate decisions on whether or not new veterinary schools open and whether the existing schools expand their intake,’ said Mr Hargreaves. ‘But unless we can quite quickly steer people into different areas of work and open up new and attractive employment opportunities for veterinary graduates there is a significant potential for overproduction, underemployment and downward pressures on salaries.’ Expectations needed to be managed from the outset, he believed, to ensure that the next generation of veterinary students realised that the veterinary marketplace was changing rapidly.
‘More for less’
Lord de Mauley, parliamentary undersecretary of state at Defra, also spoke at the dinner. He emphasised the need to tackle some difficult issues ‘against the backdrop of a changing and resourceconstrained environment’. ‘We have to find where efficiencies can be made and how we can deliver more for less,’ he said, suggesting that ‘The future role of the private vet in surveillance and TB control are good examples of the potential opportunities for us to do this by working together.’
The Government was seeking to update its relationship with vets to deliver animal health and welfare policies in a more effective and efficient way. The Veterinary Delivery Partnership Programme would award contracts to supply a flexible package of veterinary services and would also give an opportunity to enhance quality control and market-test the price paid by taxpayers. ‘We are designing the process in such a way that local practices should be able to tender jointly for the work, provided they can put in place the necessary quality assurance and are willing to accept a fairly competed price,’ said Lord de Mauley. ‘A new approach to training and appointing individual vets to perform statutory work is also being introduced. We are looking for a considerable improvement in the quality of training and level of support provided to individual vets and their employers.’ Regarding surveillance, Lord de Mauley said that vets were a vital source of knowledge and intelligence through their contacts with animals and animal keepers. ‘You are often the first to spot emerging problems and any risks associated with new practices,’ he said. ‘The challenge is in capturing that knowledge and feeding it back into the surveillance system. It will be important to continue working together to ensure that scanning surveillance remains fit for purpose and cost-effective in the future.’ On pet travel, he said that government relied on vets to fill out pet passports correctly, explain why they were important and encourage owners to get the right treatments for their pet for their journey. ‘Vets also play an important role in reporting any pets which have been imported without the correct paperwork, encouraging people to buy pets from reputable sources and in raising awareness about the dangers of buying a cheap pet from abroad without the right paperwork. We need your feedback on potential issues of this sort. But we must also keep the risk in context and ensure any response is proportionate.’ A revised EU pet travel regulation would come into effect at the end of this year, he said. The key elements of the existing scheme would remain, but new measures would strengthen the integrity of the certification process carried out by authorised vets across the EU, enhancing the security of the pet passport and improving the passport’s traceability. ‘The challenges of safeguarding animal health and welfare continue, as well as the challenge of doing this more efficiently,’ he concluded. doi: 10.1136/vr.g1927
238 | Veterinary Record | March 8, 2014
Downloaded from http://veterinaryrecord.bmj.com/ on June 29, 2015 - Published by group.bmj.com
Maintaining local practices vital to TB Control, says BVA President Veterinary Record 2014 174: 236-238
doi: 10.1136/vr.g1927 Updated information and services can be found at: http://veterinaryrecord.bmj.com/content/174/10/236.2
These include:
Email alerting service
Receive free email alerts when new articles cite this article. Sign up in the box at the top right corner of the online article.
Notes
To request permissions go to: http://group.bmj.com/group/rights-licensing/permissions To order reprints go to: http://journals.bmj.com/cgi/reprintform To subscribe to BMJ go to: http://group.bmj.com/subscribe/
