Like many, if not all, farm animal vets, my first professional work with bovine viral diarrhoea (BVD) was blood sampling herds for one of the CHeCS schemes. In a cold Scottish winter, visiting farms as part of tuberculosis and brucellosis testing, I would collect these blood samples to ensure the farmers retained the status needed to trade as BVD-accredited free. I knew it was important; however, as a relatively new graduate, I didn't apply my thinking to the wider industry, despite seeing that the accredited farms tended to have better health than the general farm.
My first hint that there might be a wider issue that extended the work I was doing beyond the individual farmgate was in the audience at a farming meeting at Thainstone mart in 2010. The audience was addressed by Moredun staff and officials from the Scottish Government, and I left convinced that something good was happening.
Career planning has never been my forte, I tend to seize opportunities as they arise. That is how I found myself in Wales, working as a University academic for the Royal Veterinary College, where BVD once again came to the forefront. The Welsh Government and stakeholder groups were beginning to tackle this disease, working to develop a suitable approach for Wales. I was fortunate enough to be involved in estimating the scale of BVD in Wales and contributing to the design of the Welsh system.
Deciding a course of action
Under the guidance of experts from Scotland's Rural College, the Royal Veterinary College and veterinarians within Wales, a stakeholder group convened in a Welsh Government building to grapple with the question of strategy. With the then CVO, Christianne Glossop, leading the conversation, the consensus was to adopt an approach built on surveillance by antibody serology. This would allow efforts to be focused on farms with demonstrable infection, minimising the burden on those without evidence of disease.
Using antibodies to guide BVD eradication efforts was appealing as it uses a relatively small number of animals, however, it requires greater understanding from the vet dealing with the farm. The selection of animals for blood sampling requires an understanding of BVD epidemiology and farm management to ensure a pragmatic selection that accurately represents the farm's BVD status. Once the sample results are known, the veterinarian must interpret them in the context of the farm. For example, if a single animal is positive, does that represent residual maternally derived antibodies (MDA), an inadvertently administered and unrecorded vaccine, or a new infection? Having decided on the farm's status, the vet must communicate the result and its consequences, whether checking and strengthening biosecurity or identifying persistently infected animals on the farm.
Opportunities for veternarians
This involvement of vets offers a huge opportunity to engage with farms, especially those where engagement has been a struggle in the past. While the legislation does allow for a delegating to a suitably trained and authorised person, in my view, it misses an opportunity for new veterinary surgeons to join the team, whether newly graduated or new to the practice. For new graduates, it provides a chance to develop the technical skills of blood sampling. In my first practice, my boss said that if you could blood sample quickly and well, farmers would have confidence in you. Some new graduates in Wales indicated that the Gwaredu BVD eradication programme was a great opportunity to gain and enhance these skills. For more experienced vets who are new to the practice, the opportunity to demonstrate this aptitude to a new range of farmers might be useful.
For a new vet, the soft skills of persuading farmers to present the correct animals and explaining the results and their implications represent a valuable learning opportunity. When discussing BVD, this is relatively straightforward, as the legislative requirement reduces the need to persuade the farmer to act. The vet only needs to consider the manner of action, lowering the stakes in the discussion.
Once the result is known, well-worn pathways can guide new vets in helping clients achieve freedom from BVD. Again, in Wales, the legislative aspect reduces the burden on the vet to persuade the farmer to act on BVD.
Success tends to breed success. Once a farmer and vet have successfully managed BVD together, other opportunities for teamwork are likely to present themselves. With the hopefully successful work on BVD demonstrating the gains expected from eradication, confidence in the vet's advice will have more traction on the farm.
By giving new vets a relatively structured programme that allows a degree of controlled freedom, it is hoped that satisfaction and confidence will build, allowing a successful introduction to the practice team.
An industry approach to teamwork
For Wales, this new industry-led eradication scheme provides an analogous learning situation. The whole industry is in the same position as that new vet; this will be the first time the Welsh farming industry has worked together to eradicate a disease. From the beginning, the farming and veterinary industries have brought their skills together to find a way forward. The Government has provided funding (and later) the ability to legislate, academics have brought expertise, farming representatives have suggested how the scheme would impact cattle farmers, and, most importantly, practising vets have both indicated how this would work in the field and delivered the testing during the voluntary programme in Wales. This new approach to partnership working will continue from the voluntary stage of the programme to the legislative portion of BVD eradication.
The novelty of this partnership approach will cause nervousness in all involved. Those involved may never have had their advice acted upon at the scale of an entire industry or been required to interpret legislation for the good of the industry, especially where that may not suit individual members’ or clients’ specific situations. As a group, those working on BVD will act for the benefit of the industry, as the ambition of BVD freedom is a better outcome for the industry as a whole. It is natural when embarking on something new to focus on the problems, and with the BVD legislation, the focus is naturally on the restrictions. However, as the industry tests all its herds, it is likely that the majority will not be restricted, and the problem is not as large as it might have been first perceived. While BVD eradication as a technical process is well documented in the literature, the application of the policy will be a learning curve for all involved, and potentially a steep one.
The eradication of disease is driven by many rationales, particularly the economic burden of disease on farming, and estimates of this burden are documented in the literature. What the industry learns through the eradication of BVD can be employed to reduce the burden of other diseases on farms in Wales.
Conclusion
Arguably the core skill set of vets is dealing with disease, particularly infectious disease. BVD represents a chance to demonstrate the effectiveness of this skill. With a legislative framework in place, the persuasion needed to start the process is removed, and the act of disease control and eradication can be carried out. This can reduce the barrier to entry for both the farmer and the vet embarking on the journey to controlling disease on the farm. The confidence gained from dealing with one issue will lead to further opportunities for on-farm improvement. Similarly, if the industry can successfully tackle one disease within a partnership framework, other opportunities will arise that can be approached using the same collaborative model. Vets have the opportunity to be an important partner in this process.