Memorandum Submitted by the Farm Animal
Welfare Council (W19)
Thank you for the opportunity to provide views
to the Committee on veterinary services in the UK. Apologies for
missing your deadline by a couple of days. It takes time to seek
views from the Council and gather these in a response.
Council sees veterinary surveillance as part
of the detailed implementation of Defra's proposed Animal Health
and Welfare Strategy, which in turn has arisen directly from the
recommendations of the Curry Policy Commission Report on Sustainable
Farming and Food. As such, veterinary surveillance is a vital
information gathering and monitoring tool on animal welfare and
disease with which to inform both Government's key strategies
and those with responsibility for management and control of these
issues.
Some areas of livestock production are better
covered (and some less well) by veterinary surveillance that fully
informs the centre with data that can be used to react to disease
situations or plan future policy. For example, the poultry sector,
while having fully adequate veterinary cover, directly employ
many of these vets. Not all the useful information on non-notifiable
disease or animal welfare issues will necessarily be reported
to Government. Extensive sheep or beef production by experienced
keepers may attract less veterinary attention than intensive production
carried out by less experienced hands.
There are a wide range of central and independent
sources of veterinary information on animal disease and welfare:
the State Veterinary Service, private practice, LVIs, the Meat
Hygiene Service, Veterinary Laboratory Agency and Farm Assurance
veterinary visits to name a few. There is currently no mechanism
for co-ordination of this potential mine of surveillance data.
Better co-ordination will bring better value in terms of resources
and information gathered.
Privatisation of the veterinary laboratories
has led to a reduction in referrals of samples from private vets
for reason of cost to their clients. This sample testing and post
mortem work must previously have been a rich source of surveillance
information, which is now reduced. More robust national surveillance
should be augmented by data from private vets on farm. Indeed
a State Veterinary Service reduced in size over the years will
mean more reliance on private vets.
FAWC fully supports veterinary surveillance
of exotic diseases because these lead to major welfare risks.
However, it is important to ensure that endemic diseases are assessed
as well as exotic ones. The former can lead to significant long
term welfare problems for animals on the farm.
In addition to disease, some serious animal
welfare problems can arise from selective breeding and the use
of breeding technologies. Veterinary surveillance should pick
these issues up early to ensure that selection strategies can
be adjusted and techniques improved or regulated.
Council sees a need for animal welfare surveillance
as a distinct area of resourced activity and not just an add-on
to disease inspections. Welfare issues, both related and unrelated
to disease, need to be targeted by specific surveillance activity.
Perhaps the strategy could have extra goals of protecting animal
welfare through prevention of animal disease and of maintaining
adequate standards of animal welfare through specific surveillance
activity.
The information on animal welfare gathered by
veterinary surveillance should be used to benefit the animal,
the livestock industry, the providers of animal protection and
the consumer. It is important that the data is quality assured
to ensure it is usable but FAWC does not see the need for it to
have 100% statistical reliability. Better that 100 conditions
be assessed to 90% reliability than only 10 to 95%.
Farm assurance may be a tool for increasing
levels of veterinary surveillance. FAWC strongly supports herd/flock
health and welfare plans as requirements of farm assurance schemes.
This would get a vet onto the farm at least once a year and provide
a holistic and structured approach to health and welfare planning
at the farm level. Data from these visits could add to the sum
of knowledge provided by veterinary surveillance. Council has
identified a need for specific training for vets taking part in
whole farm assessments for disease, welfare and preventative health
purposes in order to make such visits efficient and complete.
FAWC has attended a number of meetings related
to the proposed strategies on animal health and welfare and veterinary
surveillance. It is useful for FAWC to be on platforms such as
these to ensure that the animal welfare arguments are given prominence.
I hope that Council can continue to contribute to the development
of these important initiatives.
Judy MacArthur Clark
FAWC Chairwoman
1 May 2003
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