A 50-year history of the BCVA

On 7 April, the BCVA had its 50th birthday. Its 2017 congress in Southport, on 19 to 21 October, will be devoted to this milestone and offer chances to look forward and plan for the future.

The group follows the earlier foundation of the BSAVA in 1957 and BEVA in 1961. The evolution of the BCVA was complex. In Hannover 1961, at an international cattle diseases congress, a World Association for Buiatrics (WAB) was formed. As the word buiatrics became better known in the UK, writers to the Veterinary Record failed in attempts to change this mixture of Latin and Greek to the more prosaic World Association of Cattle Diseases.

A buiatrics constitution was published (Copenhagen, 1962) and its statutes ratified (Vienna, 1964) – both during further international meetings. National buiatrics associations were established in several countries and affiliated to the WAB. A group of UK vets had already noted the international developments in Europe and held preliminary meetings, culminating in a formal session at the RCVS, chaired by president AJ Wright, where a steering committee was appointed to draw up a scientific programme and business agenda for this group. Based on the BEVA constitution, the stage was set for 7 April 1967.

Premiere

The first BCVA meeting was held at the RVC Potters Bar campus and chaired by Charles Grunsell from the University of Bristol, who had started his career as a Glastonbury practitioner and developed herd medicine at a time when most practices were involved in the so-called “fire brigade” form of cattle medicine.

The meeting’s scientific session was on non-parasitic pneumonias, with topics such as anatomy and physiology (AS King), and pathology and virology (AR Jennings and JH Derbyshire), followed by demonstrations of live cases and pathological material from the RVC (FR Bell et al), and clinical features and epidemiology (JB White and B Martin). In the business meeting, the BCVA’s major objective was “the advancement of knowledge pertaining to cattle”. This altered the original draft document, which had referred to “veterinary knowledge”. The meeting agreed it was vital the BCVA sought wide support from non-vets. Attendees were designated founder members equally divided into practitioners and academic MRCVSs. The subscription was £2 per year.

The meeting elected Prof Grunsell as foundation president, Reading practitioner Andrew Edgson as junior vice-president and David Weaver as honorary secretary. Committee members were Geoff Arthur, Alfred Marr and Ron Spratling.

Objectives

The “advancement of knowledge pertaining to cattle” objective resonates as much today as 50 years ago, with a virtual plethora of training courses graded basic to advanced and revisional, available to all types and ages of vets. Younger vets may need reminding, in 1967, no rectal sleeves, computers or mobile phones existed, but we had functional typewriters (evidenced by the basic typed minutes of the first meeting) and a constant health worry among practitioners was the risk of acquiring brucellosis (“undulant fever”) from infected uterine discharges and fetal membranes.

Interestingly, in view of the importance of brucellosis at the time, the later WAB meeting in London 1972 had Hans Bendixon of Denmark – a world authority on bovine brucellosis – as an honoured guest, who devoted his informal talk to his first visit to the RVC in the 1920s as a young graduate. He recalled his unexpected, but welcome, invitation to the dinner club of RVC principal Sir Frederick Hobday, who had spent the day running a farrier CPD course. The young guest managed to stand up and say “there‘s something rotten in the state of Denmark”.

In those days, bTB incidence was very low, but then, as now, a persistent worry was infectious drug resistance. Not to be anticipated was the advent, later in that first BCVA year, of foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) – which, with 2,210 outbreaks, at the time represented “more than in any year of the 20th century”.

A 2001 major FMD outbreak was graphically described by Dick Sibley (Weaver et al, 2009), who observed it changed the lives of many BCVA members. He said “the biggest BCVA achievement was to stop the contiguous culling of our precious dairy cows and to bring economic and practical realities to a scientific group”. In the same paper, past-president David Harwood recalled the concept of stakeholder input to disease control strategies was born about this time and the BCVA was very much at the forefront of veterinary politics.

Membership growth

Following the first meeting, regional meetings were held in dairying areas three or four times a year. Membership growth was slow – perhaps partially due to a belief of a bias towards academia. Outstanding meetings, including a mastitis package put together by the National Institute for Research in Dairying at the University of Reading, helped publicity, and several senior members of well-established practices made major contributions.

Increasing membership led to a full-time secretariat taking over management of Cattle Practice, which had been financially supported by the pharmaceutical industry, started initially by Elanco from 1978 onwards, organisation of the annual congress that, for many years, had replaced the numerous smaller regional meetings, and functioning as the main communication arm of the organisation.

Some meetings were “world firsts”. In 1987, practitioner Colin Whitaker and local veterinary investigation officer Carl Johnson presented “A neurological syndrome” – the first veterinary description involving nine cows and one bull of what was later named bovine spongiform encephalopathy. The first Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food report followed (1987) from Gerry Wells in Weybridge, at which time the syndrome was being increasingly recognised by practitioners in the UK.

The enthusiasm and industry of those who have promoted cattle medicine via work with the BCVA has been exemplary. I would like to pay tribute to Roger Eddy (WAB council BCVA representative), Mr Harwood (who developed a different scientific programme look), Carl Padgett (a steady rock in difficult times) and Mr Sibley. I have no doubt, despite the approaching Brexit problems, the BCVA will continue to be a bastion of good advice to the Government and agricultural community. Thanks to Tony Andrews, who succeeded me as secretary and jogged my memory of those early days.