‘Scary’ years ahead amid disease challenges, BCVA congress told

Clinicians and farmers are likely to face a “scary few years” ahead due to the threats posed by new and emerging diseases, a senior vet and academic has warned.

The issue was highlighted on the opening day of the BCVA’s annual congress in Edinburgh yesterday (9 October), during a panel discussion on farming’s likely development over the next decade.

The industry has faced a number of disease challenges already this year, including the ongoing threat of bluetongue and the re-emergence of foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) in mainland Europe.

Good surveillance call

Moredun Foundation chief executive Tom McNeilly told delegates that health planning and disease prevention needed to be key priorities.

He said: “We’re going to go through a few scary years with diseases we don’t expect to deal with. But we can deal with them with good tools, good surveillance.”

UK deputy CVO Ele Brown said the bluetongue situation showed the extent to which climate change was “changing the risks” that the UK faces in disease terms and emphasised the need for continuing collaboration.

‘Huge role’

Scottish CVO Sheila Voas also argued vets had “a huge role to play” in ensuring livestock were fit to meet climatic and other challenges.

Meanwhile, Liberal Democrat MSP Willie Rennie highlighted the impact of the 2001 FMD outbreak as he urged the sector to “make the best of a crisis to educate politicians”.

But he also warned that future crises may be more difficult to tackle because of an erosion of confidence in institutions of authority.

Farmer and author James Rebanks, who earlier delivered the event’s keynote address, also echoed Mr Rennie’s concerns about reduced emphasis on tackling the climate problem as he voiced a broader lack of confidence in politicians’ approach to farming.

‘Slammed the door’

He said: “We’ve spent 20 years persuading them to go through a door and do environmentally progressive stuff and we’ve slammed the door in their faces.”

One area where farming has led the way in recent years is in its efforts to tackle antibiotic and anthelmintic resistance, amid growing awareness of the wider environmental risks linked to medicine products.

Prof McNeilly acknowledged what he described as the “potential powder keg” associated with the issue of parasiticide presence in waterways.

But Dr Voas urged delegates not to “demonise” antibiotic or anthelmintic usage, where that was appropriate for the individual animal.