Thursday, 18 2007

Surveillance notification

In recent days I have received some long and clear, automated messages on my answerphone from Defra advising me of our status in respect of Bluetongue and Foot and Mouth. This is most welcome communication and a big step forward for disease surveillance and biosecurity. Full marks!

Wednesday, 17 2007

The End of Set-aside.

The first fields of long term set-aside around us have now been ploughed up and are ready to return to arable cropping.

Set-aside has been much maligned for distorting the marketplace and encouraging farmers to grow weeds. Whatever the criticism, over time a small part has become usefully biodiverse with much more providing rough habitat that has encouraged insects, mammals and birds. Whilst this was a by-product of a market control tool, it is nonetheless disappointing that Defra and Natural England have been unable to quickly put in place an environmental scheme that could capture some of the gain that has arisen.

As set-aside ends it is noteworthy that:

Farmers produced environmental gain out of something that was never supposed to produce any, and having produced it for free, the Government wasn’t prepared to pay to save it. Defra are happy to squander hundreds of millions of pounds on consultants and ludicrously bureaucratic systems for “micro-managing” every square inch of the countryside through the RPA yet they are unable to fund the tiny cost of preserving key habitats in arable areas.

A poor record. Par for the course.

Tuesday, 2 2007

A new shadow

Confirmation that Bluetongue disease is circulating in East Anglia has cast a new shadow on the livestock sector with ruminants unable to move out of the protection zone – an area embracing most of the south east from Lincolnshire to Sussex.

This disease could be ruinous with stock losses and movement restrictions making some livestock farming impossible until a vaccine becomes available next year. Even then it may be months before production is able to meet the backlog of demand. In the meantime we can only hope for the prompt arrival of a hard winter to control the midge population to prevent further spread of the disease.

FMD continues

10 days back I was reasonably optimistic that FMD was under control. Now I am less certain and the continuing trickle of cases is worrying. Whilst Defra is doing everything it can, the ongoing battle against FMD indicates just how essential early control is. Once the disease becomes established, veterinary resources are stretched thin as they deal with both outbreaks and suspected outbreaks. This is not the case at the very outset of the disease and for this reason I believe the initial surveillance and protection zones should be bigger.