Squabbles ahead on TB tests

There’s a lot of pragmatism in my life. I never worry about things I have no control over. I never agonise over an issue that will be determined without any influence I can apply.

Nothing would be a better example of the first than the weather – and this week was a prime example. We have 40 acres of fodder that desperately needs a good drink and we also have 100 acres of second cut silage to cut, that obviously needs dry weather. I clearly have no control over the weather so I’ll just take it as it comes. If it doesn’t suit one field it will suit another.

One issue waiting to be determined was the change to how TB testing was to be carried out. I’ve not committed any brain cells to why there was to be a change or to what those changes would mean, “down on the farm”. I knew a sort of tender process was going on, and that sort of process is usually driven by an attempt to save money, but other than that I know very little about it – and there’s a fair chance if I know very little about it, neither do a lot of other farmers.

But now the detail is available, I can study it, and I have – and I don’t much like what I read. The veterinary practice that does our work will no longer be doing our official TB testing. That means our August test was be done by my practice, but after that it will be someone I don’t know. I am sure vets have a picture in their minds of the animal health issues on the farms of their clients. I am also sure there will be benefits for both vet and client if your vet sees every bovine animal on your farm, twice in the week of TB testing.

There is another benefit for the client. My vet charges me by the minute, so if you ask him for advice during a visit you get charged for that advice because the time spent will be a part of the fee. That’s fair enough. But on a TB testing day you can be chatting to the vet, as you work the crush, for example, and drift the conversation towards professional advice, and up until now, Defra have paid for it. Which is something that I quite like.

I think the new protocol will be divisive for your profession. There was a time, perhaps a couple of generations ago, when a farmer could quite easily go through life without changing his vet or his bank. Those days are long gone. If a farmer chose to change his vet, the new vet, would, out of courtesy telephone the previous one. If a vet wanted to be a partner in a practice, he had to buy his way in to an existing one. Putting your plate up and establishing a new practice was unheard of.

I think practices not now involved in official TB testing will lose clients to the practices that are. TB testing is hardly state of the art. It’s still two syringes and some callipers like it’s always been. When you squeeze those callipers on to a lump of skin, there’s got to be some grey areas within those readings the vet might give the benefit of any doubts. The purists among you will say there is no leeway, but, if so, why then do I see vets measure the same doubtful lump two or three times? How come there are inconclusives?

It is inevitable farmers will start to think if the vet doing all the testing was doing all their other vet work as well, they might have a better chance of passing.

You probably think that is a deplorable point of view, but for a farmer with a crap milk price and the bank manager breathing down his neck, the very last thing he wants is a TB breakdown and he will clutch at any imaginary straws to avoid it.

Vet against vet

It’s vets who have told me if there are 10 TB reactors in a herd, they might have to take 15 animals to be sure of getting the 10 they want. This is hardly an exact science is it? It’s a science that could just as easily take five and miss the 10. I think this new TB testing regime carries with it a lot of potential negatives for your profession. It will quite easily set vet against vet. The professional courtesies I alluded to of generations ago are long gone. Vets advertise now. New practices spring up. Practices amalgamate to form chains. Yet they all seem to have plenty of work, probably because the private health care of pets, which far surpasses the health care humans can expect with the NHS. I expect this TB testing will create a squabble within your profession. What will it do in the ongoing fight against bovine TB? Very little.

We have two new badger setts this year. They are not in hedges or woods, they are out in the fields. And we are just expected, as are all other farmers, to sit there and take it on the chin. I got off the tractor one day and peed down the main hole of one sett. I don’t know if this is against the law or not, it was my fairly silent protest. I don’t know if it will move the badgers elsewhere, but it made me feel a bit better.