Animal Health Regeneration Plan for Scotland

Animal Health Services in Scotland - A plan for regeneration

INTRODUCTION

The outbreak of foot and mouth disease (FMD) in 2001 was an unprecedented national disaster. MAFF/DEFRA/SERAD were completely unprepared and totally overwhelmed. There were three main reasons for this failure.

The State Veterinary Service had been run down from a strength of 518 veterinary surgeons in 1967 to 200 + in 2001; a reduction of 60%.
There were no workable contingency plans and where they did exist, as in Dumfries, they were not used.
Authority had been centralised and the government followed the wrong advice. The Chief Scientist (a chemist), instead of consulting the top FMD specialists, turned to the bio-mathematicians at Imperial College, University of London.

None of these mathematical modellers was a veterinary surgeon or had any experience of FMD. They devised a policy of killing healthy animals (contiguous and 3 km culls) which -

Ignored key aspects of the traditional (proven) slaughter policy
Experimental – it had never been tried before
Impracticable in that it diverted scarce resources from infected
Unethical in that it applied to healthy stock
Almost certainly unlawful

This method of control of animal disease must NEVER be used again.

FUTURE DISEASE CONTROL

The policy of slaughtering animals on infected farms should continue. Experience around the world has shown that for most outbreaks of FMD the slaughter policy is the cheapest

Dangerous contacts should also be killed, but only after a proper risk assessment including laboratory tests, made, on site, by experienced veterinary surgeons

Livestock movements should be banned as soon as disease is confirmed. International experience has shown that immediate movement controls are of vital importance.

The movement ban can be reduced to the affected area as soon as the disease pattern becomes clear.

Ring vaccination should begin according to a previously agreed protocol. This requires more thought. It could either begin after a certain number of outbreaks (e.g. 10 farms in one area) or after a certain passage of time with regular outbreaks (e.g. one week). Whatever the case, the strategy should be based on previously agreed criteria.

The arrangements for vaccination should be kept in constant readiness as recommended by the 1968 Northumberland Report

One advantage of vaccination that has received little attention is that it would enable the countryside to reopen for normal life and business in a shorter time. It must be remembered that today tourism is much bigger business than farming.

Sensible movement arrangements must be devised to avoid welfare problems e.g. healthy fatstock must be allowed to go to abattoirs or ewes moved for lambing.

There must be a single unified command for the outbreak. Changes from the laid down protocol must be kept to a minimum and uniformly applied throughout the country. There must be delegated authority to the DVM for all local operational matters, with the top tier of management concerned only with general policy

The farming community and the public must be kept informed at all times.

ADMINISTRATION OF FUTURE POLICY

There has been a slow but steady decline in the number of veterinary surgeons working in farm animal practice in Scotland. If this trend continues, a crisis of some sort is likely to occur and find us without sufficient, adequate experienced veterinary manpower to deploy rapidly.

A solution to this problem could be an extension of the old “Highlands and Islands Scheme”. Such a group could form a Territorial Veterinary Army, kept in training for any emergency. Every practice in Scotland that currently works with farm animals should have a contract with SERAD. This would provide

SERAD

Pay each farm animal practice a retainer to employ one or more vets to be called Contracted Veterinary Inspectors (CVI). In addition the practice would be paid for any statutory work that the CVI carried out

All members of the practice will undertake regular training, paid for

Every farm in its practice will be visited by the CVI on a regular basis to carry out statutory work (welfare, TB, brucellosis etc) and this work will be paid for by SERAD.

CVIs will be allowed to carry out private work during the “official” visits.

THE PRACTICE

Will give priority to SERAD work

Will in the event of a national emergency, one (or more depending upon the agreement) CVI/s will be available for “detached duty” at 12 hours notice, to be sent anywhere in Scotland.

The CVI will be expected to remain on detached duty until the end of the emergency.

The CVI will receive payment at the current daily rate; and subsistence allowance paid if necessary.

TRAINING FOR EMERGENCIES

SERAD must invest far more in training of its permanent staff and those people contracted to it. For many years the senior staff of the SVS played regular “war games” in which simulated disease outbreaks in different areas of Britain were chosen and fought; local staff took part. In this way contingency plans were produced and updated. SERAD should reintroduce this practice, and include computer-modelling activities where appropriate. The CVIs could be involved in these.

The Divisional Veterinary Manager (DVM) would then have a team of vets trained to deal with emergencies who could be deployed without delay, together with an immediate plan of action.

Formal training of permanent staff should be re-introduced: Edinburgh University and the Centre for Tropical Veterinary Medicine should be asked to run these courses in State Veterinary Medicine and Tropical Animal Science again. The practice of seconding veterinary and technical staff to work in third world countries should also be recommenced. This would both help the developing countries as well as ensuring that Britain had enough vets with first hand experience of tropical diseases. Budget cuts brought this practice to a halt in the 1980s. SERAD must consider renewing this mutually beneficial secondment.

POLITICAL DECISIONS

It is likely that SERAD will employ, or contract, many of the new veterinary graduates, and it is therefore reasonable that they should pay some of the costs of their training. At present the two schools are having difficulty making ends meet, which has resulted in their employing far fewer vets on their staff. SERAD should, therefore, pay a proportion of the costs of undergraduate training at Edinburgh and Glasgow Veterinary Schools. This would bring training of veterinary surgeons into line with that of medical doctors, where the National Health Service pays a high proportion of the costs.

It is not possible to put the clock back, but Animal Health Services should be reorganised taking into account the geography of Scotland. During the recent outbreak of FMD it was seen that trying to control disease in Dumfries from an office in Ayr did not work. It was also apparent that there was no longer an adequate command structure because there were too few people in the senior positions to which decision making had been concentrated.

There must be a much greater investment by the governments in Westminster and Edinburgh in veterinary research: in particular the BBSRC Pirbright Laboratory should be restored to its former glory. It should have as a particular function the duty to warn the British Governments of emerging diseases beyond our shores. It is interesting to note that more vets are employed by the University of Stirling Department of Aquaculture than there are in the World Reference Laboratory for FMD.

There is no scientific justification whatsoever for the slaughter of vaccinated animals. The EU must be converted to the view that vaccinated animals possess no danger of spreading the disease. There should be no prohibition of livestock trade from a country that has used vaccination to control an epidemic of FMD. Once the outbreak is over then Scotland should be allowed to resume trade in unvaccinated animals.

NEED FOR A DEBATE

The Philips Report into BSE (published in 2000) recommended that there should be open debate on scientific or animal health issues. This recommendation has been ignored.

In 2001 MAFF/DEFRA and the NFU in both England and Scotland not only stifled debate, especially about the merits of vaccination, they spread misleading and inaccurate information. For example, farmers were not informed that there was a European directive which provides for compensation for any losses incurred by farmers who vaccinated their animals. Vets working at the front line had to pick up information as they went along.

In order to clear away all this confusion, we urgently need an open honest debate. We need it now.

T. and E. Tennant - Shaws Farm, Newcastleton, Roxburghshire, TD9 0SH

D. Wardrope, MRCVS - The Ark Veterinary Surgery, LOCKERBIE, Dumfriesshire

R.S. Windsor MRCVS - Middlefield House, by DUMFRIES, DG1 3SF

Dr A. Richardson MRCVS - Poplin Dub, Johnby, PENRITH, CA11 0UT, Cumbria