Farming: Movement restrictions to make the difference on beating BVD

By Andrew Arbuckle
Published on 03/08/2012 00:48

NFU Scotland has this week backed Scottish Government plans aimed at eradicating the cattle disease Bovine Viral Diarrhoea, despite some of its membership having expressed doubts about the part of the programme preventing the movement of infected animals.

It has been estimated that the incidence of BVD in Scottish cattle costs the industry more than £10 million annually through loss of production, without taking account of the animal welfare aspects of having a wasting disease within the national herd.

NFUS livestock committee chairman Rob Livesey said there was a real desire among the majority of cattle-keepers in Scotland to make genuine progress towards eradicating the disease.

He said: “Whilst there may be some debate over some of the details on the BVD eradication plans, this remains an industry-led scheme designed to tackle a significant economic disease in cattle. It is a positive scheme that is committed to eradicating BVD from Scotland in a way that recognises the challenges involved.”

Livesey and union were responding to a Scottish Government consultation on a planned eradication programme which included the opportunity to legislate to stop movements of animals known to be persistently infected with BVD.

Those animals, even if they display no outward symptoms of the disease, pose the greatest risk of spreading the disease.

Livesey said such a move would be a great step forward in terms of disease eradication.

He added: “That should be backed by the introduction of BVD trading standards for cattle, that would allow farmers buying cattle to manage their risk, and for herds free of BVD to gain market recognition of the effort they have made to stay clear of the disease.

“It remains a challenge to get the speed of eradication controls right and that may mean that movement restrictions are phased in geographically to recognise the differing levels of disease found within Scotland.”

This geographical approach would see movement restrictions start in the North of Scotland and on many of the islands where some BVD eradication work has already taken place prior to moving to the rest of the country.