Examination of Witnesses (Questions 62-79)
Monday 12 May 2003
MR TIM
BENNETT, MR
NEIL CUTLER
AND MR
PETER RUDMAN
Q62 Chairman: We welcome the National
Farmers' Union. Mr Bennett is a regular appearer before the Select
Committee or the Sub-Committee so he needs no introduction. He
holds the office of the Deputy President of the NFU. Mr Bennett,
would you care to introduce for the record your colleagues?
Mr Bennett: Thank you very much,
Chairman. I have Neil Cutler on my left who is a dairy farmer
from Hampshire and is Chairman of Animal Health and Welfare Committee,
and Peter Rudman who is our animal health specialist.
Chairman: Thank you very much for coming.
I would like to move to Bill Wiggin for questions.
Q63 Mr Wiggin: What complement of
permanent veterinary staff should the State Veterinary Service
require, do you think?
Mr Bennett: In a sense that is
a difficult question for farmers to answer. From the farmers'
perspective what we want is a very good State Veterinary Service
with very good links to the private veterinary service. In a sense
those links will determine the number of full-time State Veterinary
Service people, and I think this link to the private veterinary
service is critical in determining the size of the State Veterinary
Service. More important from our perspective, looking back over
events, is that the State Veterinary Service is clear about its
role and the management and the administration. We would have
some big questions about the ability to manage disease outbreak
and the skill of people to manage disease outbreaks that was mentioned
earlier—you have people managing large areas and large numbers
of people. Also, frankly, in terms of administration, if you look
at TB we would have some question marks about the way the control
strategy is being administered.
Q64 Mr Wiggin: How much responsibility
should the State Veterinary Service have for non-notifiable diseases?
Mr Cutler: There is really an
area of co-ordination, which is the point of where we start from.
Our view is that we have to define the animal health and welfare
strategy first, then the role of the State Veterinary Service
within that, but if we have an integrated approach, specially
the bottom-up approach that has been talked about before in terms
of herd health planning on farms, where private vets do some element
of the surveillance and there is a flow of information through
the system, then there is a co-ordinating role for the State Veterinary
Service for elements that are not within their statutory remit
that could be very useful, because at the same time the private
system within an integrated system is providing information that
they have a statutory responsibility for, so you have a trade-off
in that if we have an integrated system the private sector can
provide some of the information that the state sector requires,
and at the same time can be useful on the elements that they do
not have a statutory responsibility for but can have a co-ordinating
role on.
Q65 Mr Wiggin: That is how you would
like to see an integrated communication system between the State
Veterinary Service and the farmer?
Mr Cutler: Yes.
Q66 Chairman: Picking up on that
line of questioning, one of the reasons why the Committee are
very interested in this area is the ability of the State Veterinary
Service to manage, in the first instance by prevention of and
where necessary by reaction to, the outbreak of a severe animal
disease. From your practical point of view, do you think we have
got a State Veterinary Service that is up to it? Is it properly
organised to deal with those two challenges? If not, what is the
message to the government to get it right?
Mr Bennett: Again, coming back
to the administration, if you have a State Veterinary Service
that has a controlled disease it needs to know where the animals
are so it would be quite useful if it were at least known where
all the keepers of animals were and what sort of animals they
had. In a sense, for the State Veterinary Service to be able to
do the role and what is envisioned, they need to know where the
animals are.
Mr Cutler: We found it very disappointing,
for example, that the British Cattle Movement Service was set
up as a mechanism for disease control specifically in BSE but
at the moment does not appear to be performing that function,
and is not able to be used by the State Veterinary Service or
by private vets in a particularly efficient way. You have a separate
database system, and we see it in TB controls all the time. There
is a huge amount of very out-of-date administration there. There
is a lot of handwritten forms when the information should be able
to be downloaded from the BCMS—there is a lot that is very
archaic within the system. It is not a question of absolute numbers;
it is a question of defining the role first and then finding out
how to make it work better.
Q67 Chairman: Perhaps I might just
ask you, Mr Cutler, whether you would care to jot down and expand
on some of the archaic nature of the some of the things you do
have to put up with, particularly if it inhibits the quality and
the effectiveness of the way the State Veterinary Service operates.
Let me move to the economics of State Veterinary Service services,
because there are some important issues as to whether, particularly
in the livestock sector, it is generating sufficient revenue—nay
even profitability—to employ veterinary services perhaps
with the frequency that is needed to do all the business about
planning animal health disease, surveillance and so on and, on
the other hand, having a strategy to deal with some of the threats
to the livestock sector. It does question whether farmers themselves
in the livestock sector are adopting different plans now as to
when they use their vets. All of this is a circular argument because
it does affect the experience of the veterinary profession in
operating in the large animal sector. Would you like to comment
on some of the stresses and strains in that area and what it means
in reality to our veterinary services?
Mr Bennett: In terms of agriculture
and facing more competition and being competitive around the world,
obviously one has to make sure that all input costs are economical
and reasonable. What you find with veterinary costs as a farmer
is that on top live management you have to use your vet in a very
professional manner. If you are getting top live performance from
your animals, in whatever sector, and you have a good relationship
with your vet you are more likely to be profitable but it is this
professional relationship. What we have to do is add to this professional
relationship so that it is a partnership in developing a strategy.
I looked at the spending by farmers for the government's farm
business survey, and the percentage they spend on vet and medicine
costs in terms of percentage of their variable inputs is much
the same as it was five years ago, so farmers are looking at costs
and what they are spending but what I cannot do is break down
the difference between drugs and professional services.
Mr Cutler: We have looked at how
health planning can be integrated into an animal health strategy
and talked to farmers and the basis of a health plan through farm
assurance, for example, is often seen as an imposition because
the benefits are not being sold to them. It is interesting that
in the previous evidence members of the veterinary profession
talked about there not being demand. Part of it is because they
have not created demand by selling the services and showing the
benefit, and I think there is a need to develop the strategy within
the veterinary profession and the information to be able to sell
the cost benefit to farmers of a health plan. At the moment it
is all seen as a cost rather than a benefit in lots of ways yet,
as has been referred to, the top producers know the benefit; they
have worked it out for themselves. What we need is more tools
to demonstrate the benefit of the planning and the preventative
approach.
Q68 Chairman: On this area of questioning
can I just ask whether you think there are enough vets presently
available with large animal experience? Are you finding any messages
of shortages of services that your members would like to buy from
the veterinary profession?
Mr Bennett: There is a failing
out there, particularly in certain parts of the country, and to
be honest in areas where there is very heavy workload in terms
of TB testing there is sometimes difficulty in getting adequate
veterinary services, and what we cannot judge is whether that
is because we are catching up in terms of TB and trying to get
on top of the disease, particularly post foot and mouth. My suspicion
is that there are probably plenty of vets about and probably enough
good large animal vets about. There is concern about that but
what is important is that it is people with the right skills.
The professional industry we have is developing more and more
but what farmers will want are professional services because they
are in that sort of area where you have to be professional to
survive and they will want to pay for the services of good professional
people, and we are worried about the supply of that for the future.
Mr Cutler: There are some very
forward-thinking vets who are developing methods of selling their
services. It takes time but I think that cultural shift from recognising
that you are sort of service provider to recognising that you
have knowledge and you are selling that knowledge effectively
is where we want to get to. At the moment they are a fire brigade
profession that has the knowledge and when people ask for it they
will sell it for a price, but it needs to be turned around so
that they are actively selling a positive service that will provide
an economic benefit to their customers.
Q69 Paddy Tipping: I would like to
pursue that. In the more marginal livestock areas, let's be clear,
there is not a lot of money and profit around, and we hear that
the number of visits is getting less and less. Now that has implications
for disease surveillance. How do we ensure that we get national
disease surveillance?
Mr Cutler: That is a difficult
question in those marginal areas, and there is still room for
development. One can look at the different livestock sectors,
and effectively pigs and poultry are almost there, in terms of
having specialist vets who are providing health planning and broader
advice like feeding advice and housing advice. It is there to
a certain extent within the dairy sector and it becomes less and
less as you move into pigs and sheep. There is still room to develop
the sale of services to sheep farmers but in a way we need the
economic information as to what the benefits could be, and these
are not particularly broadly available. If it then shows that
there is no way that the industry can afford it then we need to
look at other mechanisms to fund it—to fund the surveillance
or annual visit. As a farmer I do not feel we actually have that
information yet. It may be there but it is not in the form that
it can be used, and I think that is more to the point.
Q70 Paddy Tipping: One of the things
I picked up during this afternoon's discussion was this phrase
"whilst you are here we will have a look at so-and-so".
The professionals have been saying to us that they have an educative
role in terms of biosecurity or animal health or food safety.
Is that a service that they should be selling?
Mr Cutler: Certainly with biosecurity
I do not see that it should be separated from a health plan. Biosecurity
is part of a health plan; it is about prevention. Now, there are
broader issues about biosecurity affecting the wider community
as well and so there are some costs or benefits that accrue to
the individual producer and there are some that accrue to the
broader region or whatever. Again, in separating out the cost
and the value and the benefits it would be useful to perform some
of these exercises to see where it can be achieved from the market
and where it can be achieved or where it needs to be effectively
subsidised.
Q71 Paddy Tipping: But is not part
of the vet's role to pass on knowledge to you and your stockmen,
and who should pay for that?
Mr Cutler: Again, if that relationship
has changed and the vet is seen as a professional adviser who
has provided information and benefit, then that educational role
can be provided in that way.
Mr Bennett: The farmer will pay
for professional advice that aids his business. What we are about
here in terms of animal welfare and disease is to prevent, and
if your prevention policy is good because you have very good professional
advice you get a return on your money. Perversely I have to point
out that if you are good at prevention it sometimes means you
spend less on vet services because the vet has been successful,
and I think that is important.
Q72 Paddy Tipping: Tell me about
NADIS? Does it work? Is it effective?
Mr Cutler: It is a very useful
guide and those that are involved are enthusiastic about it. I
have heard criticism that it is not strictly scientific and statistically
relevant in all cases because there is an element of subjectivity
in the reports, but certainly those that are involved in the reporting
are very enthusiastic. It shows what can be done within the private
sector because it has been subsidised by the drug companies and
not by the government as far as I know, and is a good model that
could be developed further, but I think it has a way to go. Farmers
use the information but I am not sure it is as broadly understood
or recognised as it could be. Farmers' Weekly Interactive
shows the results and it is a question of how many farmers are
looking at Farmers' Weekly Interactive!
Q73 Mr Drew: We have touched on this
already so I am not going to spend very long asking you to elaborate
but on the health and welfare strategy of the government, at one
end we have the farmer who has now been asked to produce these
health and welfare plans, and standing next to the farmer is the
private veterinary practitioner. Outside the private veterinary
practitioner we have the State Veterinary Service and superimposed
on that DEFRA officials and so on. Is that a happy continuum,
or should there be really much more devolution down to the farmer
and the veterinary practitioner to be the driving force of this
health and welfare strategy?
Mr Bennett: Briefly, Neil has
been heavily involved in working on this strategy but the strategy
will not work if the farmer is not involved right from the early
stages of a strategy like this. You need to feel completely involved
in the process and in how you control disease and how you prevent
disease, and I think that lesson has been learnt from foot and
mouth disease because most farmers did not know what the contingency
plan and the strategy was on day one, so I think that is a lesson
that has been learned. But do not underestimate the industry.
It was the industry who started farm assurance to make sure the
consumer was happy with our end of the supply chain, and it was
the farmer that developed farm assurance schemes and health plans,
so we have a role to play here because we identified this some
time ago and we have great potential if it is done in the right
way and sold in the right way. Some farmers I know and some sectors
in particular are nervous about this concept, but I think we as
farmers could deliver this and are a key part of delivering the
strategy, because we already have some ideas how to do it.
Mr Cutler: We went to look at
the French Groupment system which is effectively a co-operative,
regional or department-based system that is run as farmer animal
health co-operatives who work with the vets on the strategy in
that local region and buy into it because of that—they can
see a local benefit. For example, the Dijon department we looked
at first were TB free, so they had no TB testing but they all
agreed that anything imported was tested. They were brucellosis
free and they were working at BVD and IBR at that stage. They
could see a benefit of selling the local product as being free
of those diseases but also, of course, disease control is so much
more effective if you can do it over an area. Now I think it would
be ambitious for us to get to that stage very quickly but the
key to a strategy that will work is to have farmer involvement
at the bottom believing that it is of value to them. We need to
adapt that, so the important thing is to get the health planning
showing an economic benefit as part of the strategy.
Q74 Chairman: Why is it ambitious
to hold back from doing that here?
Mr Cutler: I think it needs to
evolve. It does not need to be seen to be being imposed, let's
put it that way, because if farmers feel it is being imposed from
above they will not buy into it. They will buy into it if it seems
a genuine benefit from ground level and enthusiasm can be built
from the ground up. That is one of the areas we would like to
develop.
Q75 Mr Drew: One way to do it is
to make it one of key components of the CAP reform—that
you would pay farmers to have a health plan and you would say
that as part of that health plan they would have to have regular
checks with their own vets and these would have to be both registered
and published, and this would clearly hopefully drive up standards.
Is that not a good way? It is not imposed; it is an incentive,
and you get paid for doing this.
Mr Cutler: The balance is how
much of it can be sold as an economic benefit to yourself and
paid for yourself, because there is an element of benefit there
and, again, the work has not been done yet to develop the models
where perhaps a vet can come on to a farm with the software that
says, "You have put in your farm details and, for these diseases,
if you get them, it will cost you this and this is the prevention
strategy". That is the sort of thing that demonstrates the
savings and production gains that can be made. So there is an
element that can come out of the market effectively if it is marketed
correctly; there is an element of incentivising that could be
useful; and there is an element of regulation that could be useful
as well, and it is finding the balance between them that will
cause the strategy to progress from the bottom up.
Mr Bennett: In terms of cross-compliance,
that is fine for those that claim support and in return for getting
that support there is an issue of cross-compliance, but of course
there are many thousands of farmers who do not claim support and
we are in an animal disease and welfare strategy and we want to
capture all of those. Our judgment is that for what I would call
the professional farmers building for the future we are already
well down the road that Neil has described, and we have to find
a way of taking all of the industry that way.
Q76 Mr Drew: Do you include within
that hobby farmers? Because this is where it will break down.
I saw you look askance at the back at the points I was making
but I know you would be sympathetic in that if you have someone
with two sheep next door to you who is letting them run amok those
animals could be just as liable to disease. Where and how do you
draw the line?
Mr Bennett: Firstly, we need to
know who are animal keepers and where they are kept purely for
disease purpose in case there is a major outbreak, but we are
constantly being told as farmers that we have to keep our business
biosecure. In terms of poultry units it is a little easier but
for a cattle keeper like myself, if I have next door to me, no
matter how well-fenced, animals who are not monitored and who
never see a vet they are a potential risk to my business, so to
me it is pretty obvious that we need to know where anyone is who
keeps animals. That is to the benefit of the state. For the benefit
of me as an individual these people need to act professionally
if they keep animals otherwise they should not have them.
Mr Cutler: I am afraid I think
the court is out as to whether chickens ought to be included in
that. My mother-in-law tells me that in Norfolk Bernard Matthews
made sure that no one kept turkeys around. He basically said "Get
rid of your turkeys, we will provide them for free at Christmas",
and for years she had a free turkey from him for disease control
purposes. They did not want people to keep them.
Q77 Chairman: Is this an offer from
the NFU of free chickens at Christmas?
Mr Bennett: I think the best offer
I can make is that chickens should be included but we will not
insist on passports for them!
Q78 Chairman: We will move from generosity
to matters of commerce, in conclusion. You heard me raising the
question of the Competition Commission report with our previous
witnesses. Do you really think that it would have a measurable
impact on the economics of the livestock sector? If you do, which
is what your evidence suggests, what would be the effect thereafter
on the demand for veterinary services?
Mr Bennett: We believe in terms
of the world we live in today that we need very transparent supply
chains on inputs and outputs, and I think in terms of the veterinary
profession it is no different. We have to be able to make sure
that we are operating in a world that is transparent and clear.
Funnily enough I regard the ability to have more competition in
terms of drugs as an opportunity for the veterinary profession
because I believe that what has been holding it back is that on
the back of the Competition Commission it has to go out and sell
its excellent professional services. As a farmer I want to be
able to pay for good professional advice and I want to know what
I am paying for. For any other profession, be it accountants or
any other profession, I pay for the work that they do, and so
I am not as pessimistic as some of those who have given evidence
about this. If you live in a transparent world and are given choice
professionals who offer good service always come out on top, so
I think this is a storm in a tea cup. We live in this transparent
world, we have to live within it with everything we do, so does
everyone else.
Q79 Chairman: On that optimistic
and hopeful note, may I thank you most sincerely for your patience
and your evidence, and as always, if there is anything else you
would like to say to the Committee in the light of what you have
heard this afternoon or any subsequent evidence sessions, do feel
free before we produce our report to let us have your further
thoughts.
Mr Bennett: Thank you. We will
probably come back to you on your suggestion on administration.
Chairman: And free chickens! Thank you.
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