By DAVID COULTER

Published at 09:38, Friday, 05 February 2010

AS Defra publishes its draft Bill on animal health, the CLA has said that farmers should be given more control over the way that disease control is managed.

Lessons learned: William Worsley wants to see shared decision-making.

CLA president William Worsley said the Government could not be trusted to carry it out effectively.

He continued to say that the Government needed to acknowledge that disease control measures already impose significant costs on farmers and rural businesses.

He said: “Just look at foot-and-mouth disease, and bovine TB. There have been too many examples of poor decisions and grossly excessive costs being imposed on both the industry and the public purse.

“We were horrified two years ago when a bio-security lapse in a Government institution was responsible for a foot-and-mouth outbreak.

“It resulted in enormous costs being imposed on the industry, which was also suffering from economic stress and the arrival of bluetongue.

“Accordingly, the CLA strongly supports the proposal to find an improved way of sharing decision making.

“We think the decisions will be better, and the overall costs reduced.

“However, we remain very concerned about the intention to impose a levy on farmers to meet the costs.

“Farmers already pay significant sums of money on bio-security, vaccination and other measures to keep their stock disease free.”

CLA North-East director Angus Collingwood-Cameron added: “Shared costs and shared responsibility sounds okay in principle, but farmers already shoulder significant costs, whether directly for vaccines and other measures, or indirectly through movement restrictions.

“Will this be taken into account or will this simply be an exercise of shifting a Defra cost on to the industry?”

l DAIRY industry groups, veterinary experts and farm leaders met for the first time this week as part of an industry initiative to fight Johne’s disease.

The Action Group on Johne’s was set up to co-ordinate a more effective response to controlling the disease in the dairy herd.

Johne’s is a contagious and chronic infection that affects the small intestine of ruminants.

Dairy UK technical director Ed Komorowski chaired the meeting.

He said: “The momentum for the action group came out of a conference we held in December.

“The enthusiasm of delegates showed that there was enormous appetite in the industry to co-ordinate action against Johne’s.

“I believe the best way of doing this is through partnership with other industry bodies, such as the NFU and DairyCo, and by tapping the expertise of vets, milk laboratories and farmers themselves.

“This week’s meeting confirms that the industry is right to be trying to tackle this together.”

Farmers’ Forum chairman Roger Evans added: “By taking a whole industry approach, the Johne’s Action Group hopes to co-ordinate a range of disparate activity, establish best practice and develop a strategy to communicate this to farmers.

“Together, I hope we can reduce the heavy emotional and financial toll of this disease on farmers.”

Published by http://www.hexhamcourant.co.uk