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Discussion topics
Animal health & welfare
Promoting better animal health and welfare
Externality issues (where problems or benefits generated by one business are felt by others who have no choice in the matter) can arise with respect to contagious diseases (e.g. when some farmers think there are few incentives to protect against spread). Whilst the benefits might be larger than the costs, these benefits are largely uncertain and will occur at some point in the future. The costs are much more certain and largely up-front. Greater awareness of costs of endemic disease through e.g. inclusion of mortality rates in benchmarking systems or through modelling of disease costs could increase farmer incentive to deal better with endemic disease. Actions would need to be mainly targeted at the sector level. The on-farm management technique of proactive farm health planning can go a long way to making that happen.
The biggest threat to animal health at the moment is bovine TB and this currently burdens farmers with large costs due to being forced to keep animals which would have been sold on their farm and receiving a reduced price if they are forced to sell them through a ‘red market’. Even an inconclusive reactor can close up a herd for weeks and problems like delays in analysing culture samples can increase the period of restrictions, even if the farm is subsequently found to be free of TB. Government MUST deal with this issue and take a good look at the Welsh government’s badger cull. Even if they are worried that badger culling will make them unpopular with the voters, something must be done to control a diseased badger population otherwise there will be damage to human health as well as farming industries. Farmers feel powerless to do anything to control bovine TB on their holdings when they have no way of stopping diseased badgers entering their land, badgers have also been known to attack lambs but the farmer has no recourse he can take against the badger.
Some of the conflicts and issues relating to AHW have been picked up elsewhere in this discussion. It is worth noting that farm health planning has been one of the areas focused on under the Rural Development Programme for England. However, the delivery through RDAs has resulted in a sporadic approach (not all regions have developed an animal health themed programme) and some differences in implementation across the regions that have instigated a dedicated programme. Whilst the discussion document talks of cross-industry campaigns and a proactive approach to planning, there is an inherent inconsistency in how this particular mechanism is being used to address health and welfare issues on farm.