President's Welsh Dinner Speech
15 May 2003
This evening I intend to take as my theme the interaction of the theoretical with the practical: regulation set in a practical context. I am sure that you Bob [Bob Parry - President FUW] will have an empathy with these views and thoughts.
I have just come back from a conference in Chicago where the difficulties of regulation and law interpretation were frequently a point of discussion. The difficulties experienced in America between state and federal government were echoed by the Australians in their system of territorial and commonwealth government and also the Canadians with their state and national parliament. There is an important lesson for all of us in that we must not allow the fervour for devolution to increase the bureaucracy of government and the promulgation of rules for the sole purpose of creating difference.
Disease knows no boundaries, recognises no nation state frontier, no ideological nicety. Indeed when I was working on the Foot and Mouth crisis I was working on the border between Hereford and Monmouth, England and Wales, all that I could see was a river, a valley, a mountain path, glorious countryside and a view of smoke and the glow of funeral pyres and a countryside that echoed to the sounds not of livestock but lorries, mechanical shovels and captive bolts followed by silence and the sounds of confused birds uncertain as to whether they should sing a lament.
If disease knows no boundaries then we, who work with the farming and rural industries have a duty to ensure that those who write the rules understand the practical implications of that which they wish to control and for that which legislation is produced. I would refer you to current discussions on the equine passport issue where the envisaged legislation appears to be for England to be followed by separate regulation for Wales and for Scotland. What this will mean for the growing Welsh horse industry, let alone the important markets, is a serious concern especially as over 50 organisations are to be allowed to issue identification documents! A recipe for confusion. We must not lose the opportunity to establish a national database.
The answer to the increasing number of regulation producers is not however in stakeholder meetings. This 'new disease' is rapidly spreading over the whole country. I am all for open government and indeed consultation should be at the forefront of any parliamentarians agenda but the extent and nature and sheer number of these stakeholder meetings threatens to overwhelm the likes of your [turning to Bob Parry] and my organisations. Indeed the number of free consultations the Government has at the veterinary profession's expense will only be matched by the soon to be free prescriptions that the Competition Commission believes we should now provide. Truly the profession will soon be the largest charity in the country!
My point is serious, however, and it is to urge a rationalisation of consultation for if the Whitehall pattern is to spread to Wales and Scotland then the availability of fully briefed representatives will be a burden too far for those of us who give of our time at present willingly.
I cannot move on from this theme of regulation without mentioning Europe. The EU affects each and every one of us, soon the EU will increase by another 10 countries and with it will come a new set of problems. We are all, here, particularly aware of the effect on agriculture that the preparatory changes for this expanded Europe are likely to have. We have had to swallow a lexicon of words, mid-term review, degression, modulation, cross-compliance, de-coupling etc - all economic speak for how to cope with an agricultural production that those who lead us are uncertain as to whether they want or need. Indeed the very global nature of food in terms not so much of production but geared as to sales to the consumer where the energy cost of putting the exotically grown on the plate can not be sustainable or justifiable. All the more reason for the farming industry and the veterinary profession to work together to ensure the quality standard of production in this country that we are constantly told the consumer demands.
On Monday I spent the late afternoon in London in front of the House of Commons Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee (EFRACOM) giving evidence at the start of their inquiry into the supply of vets and veterinary services. The Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons also gave evidence, as did the NFU. We welcome the enquiry if for no other reason than it gave us an opportunity to put right their previous enquires view on TB testing. The profession should be proud of its efforts in clearing a backlog of two years testing, caused by the delays during the FMD crisis, in one year. It was an error to point to the number of tests outstanding when we are only too well aware, and the research carried out by our division, the British Cattle Veterinary Association, clearly shows that these lists are outdated and full of errors. TB remains the current major disease problem. We must not be complacent. We must urge government and devolved administrations that we have no intention of living with this disease. It must not be tolerated but eradicated. There is no value in criticising those within the state veterinary services for their efforts if they are starved of the resources to cope with the paperwork that flows in ever increasing amounts from each new case or outbreak of this disease. This country can find the resources to go to war in Iraq, it is time that it found the resources to go to war with the enemy within, TB.
But I digress.
The reason for the inquiry is that the recent Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons' Manpower Survey shows that the profession has increased its time on small animal activities to 73.5% in 2002 from 66% in '98 and that time spent on farm animal activities has decreased substantially, for cattle from 14% in '98 to 7.5% in 2002, for sheep from 4% in '98 to 1.3% in 2002 and pigs from 2% to 0.4%
This trend is also born out as to future aspirations as shown in the BVA survey carried out with the Association of Veterinary Students where 12% of students on entering college intended to enter farm practice but only 8.5% expected to on being at college. The present political argument over the cost of education is encapsulated in the problems facing the veterinary students, a five or six-year course with little opportunity to earn during the holidays because of compulsory attendance on farms or veterinary practices during the university vacations means a large debt at the end of the course. The economic state of farming in recent years has seen the decline in the use of veterinary services and the loss of veterinary jobs. The students will in future look to the companion animal and equine sector to help them service their student debt. There is a need for the education process that has left the Veterinary Schools in need of assistance in their farm animal departments to address the balance that will require the value of the veterinary surgeon to the farm sector be emphasised. Indeed if the wish of the Government as expressed in the current consultations on Surveillance and Animal Health and Welfare Strategy are to be realised then this manpower problem must be addressed. As we explained to EFRACOM in crude terms if farm incomes are poor and the value of livestock either as capital or profit are low then the usage of the veterinary profession falls but the cost to the nation as a whole of this loss of trained surveillance can be colossal. Look at the cost of BSE, swine fever and FMD. Indeed even the Competition Commission suggested that if there was a 'public good' to be had in the state of the nation's animal health and welfare then the nation, through the public purse should pay.
Recent history has shown the importance of novel and exotic diseases being identified and reported by practising veterinary surgeons working in the field. I have already mentioned FMD, swine fever and BSE, and the practising vet is crucial in this surveillance role. To our mind a national network of enthusiastic and skilled vets working and able to work with farm livestock is essential.
Given moves in the EU to classify farms as food businesses and requiring them to have 'whole farm plans' with annual veterinary visits, it will not surprise you to learn that in our response to the Animal Health and Welfare Strategy consultation we said 'the BVA believes strongly that animal health planning should be expected from all animal keepers whose own personal responsibility should be emphasised, and, in the case of farmed livestock, there should be compulsory farm specific herd/flock health plans.'
We are not, I should stress and trust you already realise, in any way insensitive to the problems farmers face and as such we see the way forward as one of working together to improve animal health and welfare, protecting public health, and thereby contributing to the well-being of the agricultural industry and with it the rural economy and the environment. Only by constructive collaboration can we go forward. We must see this as an opportunity to promote what I have personally been a strong advocate of, and that is British agriculture and the quality food that it can produce.
It is to be hoped that the production of a wide ranging and long-term animal health and welfare strategy will facilitate the improvements necessary to recover and then maintain a high animal health status, while maintaining our tradition of protecting the welfare of the animals kept in the United Kingdom.
My colleagues here tonight would not expect me to pass without commenting on the outcome of the Competition Commission's inquiry into Veterinary Medicines. I am aware that the NFU has welcomed the report with pleasure; we are not overly enthusiastic but accept that transparency and clarity as to value are perfectly reasonable expectations. We are also accepting of their oft-repeated statement that we undercharge for our professional time and expertise. Perhaps these expert economists and business advisers can determine how our fees should rise in a market place where the farming world is suffering depressed returns and with a government seeking increased surveillance and animal health and welfare monitoring and an ethical and indeed vocational belief in providing a 24-hour service. Perhaps the message the profession should take from this report and the unseemly speed with which government adopted it, is that vocation is to be sacrificed on the altar of competition economic theory. The area of the profession most likely to be affected is the farm animal sector that very area that I was highlighting earlier as in difficulty already in terms of manpower. As the NFU said in their evidence to EFRACOM on Monday night 'the availability of farm animal vets, and their relationship with livestock farmers, are key issues that will need to be addressed if the animal health and welfare strategy is to progress beyond the vision that DEFRA has proposed'.
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