21 Oct 2022
Delegates have been urged to get behind the ongoing Animal Health and Welfare Pathway project on the first day of the annual gathering in Birmingham.
Allister Webb
Job Title
Hilton Birmingham Metropole hotel.
Farm vets were urged to “control the controllable” as the BCVA’s annual congress opened in Birmingham yesterday (20 October).
The call came as a senior Government official told delegates he had been encouraged by discussions with vets and farmers during the ongoing development of the Animal Health and Welfare Pathway (AHWP).
In Thursday’s keynote session, Defra’s Richard Watkins urged delegates to get behind the programme, which has 35 vets as part of a 180-strong development group.
The session was told that participants saw the process as a marked change from how the department engaged with the industry before, in enabling them to shape the policy.
Mr Watkins said: “Policy ideas often have good principles around them, but they also have to be deliverable. The AHWP has been designed to both be deliverable and to evolve. In five years, you should see a real cultural change.
“The pathway is more than funding at farm level, but also about greater levels of consumer understanding and choice. It should help us to demonstrate the gains made by vets and farmers in terms of health and welfare.”
Stewart Houston, a non-executive member of the Animal Health and Welfare Board, added: “The pathway is not an inspection, but rather a long-term programme that aims to meet the specific needs of individual farms. Dealing with endemic diseases will lead to a reduction in antibiotic use and ultimately increased productivity.”
He also suggested that good progress now could enable the department to take a less prominent role in the future.
Mr Houston said: “If we can get off to a good start, industry could take over some of the responsibilities that currently lie with Defra.”
The session also heard the project is seeking to improve communications through organisations like the BCVA.
Later, during a session on issues relating to bTB, Sarah Tomlinson from the TB Advisory Service said lessons she had drawn from that programme ought to be applied to work on the pathway as well.
She urged vets and farmers to focus on what they can control on the farms they work on, rather than things they can’t, adding: “The advice has to be really specific, not general.”
