We explore the cattle vaccination debate in the fight against bovine TB in the south west. Peter is joined by TB tester Ralph Drouin and Wiltshire farmer Max Sealy.
Probably one of the biggest challenges UK agriculture has faced for several years is TB in cattle and it’s certainly something that tests the resilience of all our beef and dairy farmers here in the South West. From the badger cull to movement restrictions and on-farm testing - much has been tried to prevent the spread of the disease, albeit with very limited results. Today we’re going to ask what role vaccination can play in the TB debate and whether a full vaccination programme could make South West farms more resilient?
Peter is joined by a vet and a farmer. Ralph Drouin is a TB tester with Shepton Vets in Somerset. He worked in a mixed, mainly farm practice in Somerset until dairy quotas arrived in 1984. He then joined MAFF as a Veterinary Officer, dealing with BSE, TB and Foot and Mouth Disease. He’s been with Shepton Vets since 2015. Max Sealy is a fourth-generation dairy farmer from near Chippenham in Wiltshire. He’s also a farm consultant with 25 years of experience in farm management.
Throughout this series we are focusing on the topic of resilience.
Farming Focus is the podcast for farmers in the South West of England, but is relevant for farmers outside of the region or indeed anyone in the wider industry or who has an interest in food and farming.
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Timestamps
00:01 Cornish Mutual jingle.
00:14 Peter Green introduces today's show.
02:32 Ralph takes us through some of his experiences regarding TB in cattle.
03:19 When did TB start becoming a major issue in the south west?
04:07 Max talks about his experience with TB in cattle.
05:58 How does it feel on TB test day?
07:16 The farming community working and standing together.
08:05 Why is TB such a big challenge?
10:00 What were the impacts of TB on Max of breakdowns? - Loss of income especially.
11:00 What does resilience mean to Max?
12:33 What does a TB resilient farm business look like?
15:30 How could cattle farmers improve their biosecurity on their farms?
17:15 What does Max feel about this?
20:00 Usefulness of cattle vaccination from Max's point of view.
21:25 What would the logistics be of a farm vaccination programme?
27:02 Vaccination of the wildlife pool.
28:48 Getting on top of the disease.
30:00 Is Max confident that the south west will be TB free in future?
31:25 Showstoppers
34:20 Cream Teas...
35:00 Peter rounds up.
Jingle
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Peter Green
Hello and welcome to episode nine of this first series of Farming Focus, the new podcast for farmers in the southwest of England. Brought to you by Cornish Mutual. I'm your host Peter Green. Throughout this series we're encouraging farmers across Cornwall, Devon, Somerset and Dorset to ask how resilient their businesses are going forwards and to investigate how we can make them more resilient.
Probably one of the biggest challenges UK agriculture has faced for several years is tuberculosis or TB in cattle and it's certainly something that tests the resilience of all beef and dairy farmers here in the southwest. A breakdown on farm can lead to the removal of precious livestock with statutory compensation often falling short of the true value of the bloodlines lost.
But the impact is often wider. Businesses that rely on trading cattle can be prevented from raising funds to cashflow their operation. Greater stock levels on farm put pressure on fodder and sometimes the most acute impact can be on the mental health of the family that run that farm. Indeed, the recent survey in Wales found that 85 percent of farmers said TB negatively impacts their mental health.
From the badger cull to movement restrictions and on farm testing, much has been tried to prevent the spread of the disease, albeit with pretty limited results. So today we're going to ask what role vaccination of cattle can play in the TB debate, and whether a full vaccination programme could make South West farms more resilient.
To discuss this, I'm joined by a vet and a farmer. Ralph Druin is a TB tester with Shepton Vets in Somerset. He's worked in a mixed, mainly farm practice in Somerset until dairy quotas arrived in 1984. He then joined the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food as it was then as a veterinary officer dealing with BSE, TB and foot and mouth disease.
He's been with Shepton Vets since 2015. Max Seeley is a fourth generation dairy farmer from near Chippenham in Wiltshire. He's also a farm consultant with 25 years of experience in farm management. Ralph, welcome to Farming Focus. Thank you. Max, welcome to you. Great, thank you. So, Ralph, you experience the TB rollercoaster every working day.
Can you take us through some of your experiences, please?
Ralph Drouin
Well, I had my first reactor in 1984 and I looked at it and I didn't know what it was, quite simply. TB was such a rarity nearly 40 years ago that young assistants in practice who did the bulk of the testing didn't see reactors. Really? Sadly, that didn't last long and I dealt with TB fairly consistently throughout my career until...
Now over the last few years, I've also become a TB advisory scheme advisor.
Peter Green
Right. Okay. That's that's, um, some people will know that as TBAS.
Ralph Drouin
TBAS. Yes.
Peter Green
Okay. So, so when would you say TB started to become a really major issue that was affecting more farms than not almost across the Southwest, particularly.
Ralph Drouin
Well, I tell farmers that I've grown up with TB, I say my first reactor was in 1984, I've been qualified five years since then. Following that period, I just encountered, generally speaking, more and more TB as time went on. Yeah. Yeah. So it was a gradual progression from, from 1984.
Peter Green
Yeah. Okay. Max, what's been your personal experience of TB?
And I guess it'd be really interesting perhaps for, for our listeners who, who maybe don't have cattle and haven't experienced a TB test day to maybe share a bit about the feelings and what's going on internally on a TB test day, please.
Max Sealy
Cool. Yeah. Well, I, I first met Ralph actually, uh, when he came to our farm, when we first, uh, encountered issues with TB back in late 1990.
I took over, or came home in 1997 and really TB has, has, has been alongside my farming career. Ever since really, so what's that 20, 27, 26, 27 years in in farming without trying to sound too dramatic. We've basically been shut down with TB here for over 20 years on this farm. So our personal situation is that I have probably not really missed a 60 day test.
Uh, other than a few intervals, should we say of maybe 6 months or so when we will be being clear over that period. In particular, since 2016, uh, we had a very big breakdown December 2016 and from then through until sort of 20, 2019, early 2020, uh, we lost, uh, 266 cows. Uh, from this farm with TB, um, put that into context at the time we were milking about 250, 260 cows, uh, we're now milking 350 cows, um, so it has literally dominated the way in which we run this farm.
Peter Green
So you've had to adapt your business model to take, to assume that you will have TB on the farm and it will be an issue there.
Max Sealy
I've had to, I've had to run my business plan, my expansion, uh, everything we do in terms of how we manage the cattle, all of, all of which has been centered around TB. Yeah. And I'm sure that will resonate actually with a lot of, um, the cattle keepers that we, we have listening in the introduction there.
Peter Green
I talked about, um, the mental health impact. Um, what's, what's been the impact for you personally? Talk, talk us through how it feels when you've got that vet there and they, they find that first reactor on, on the reading day of a TB test.
Max Sealy
Well, I suppose we're quite a strong family, really, and we believe in what we do, and we have, uh, we've made a conscious decision that we're in the dairy and the livestock farming industry, and this is just something that we have to work into alongside.
All of the other aspects of, of that, but yeah, that the emotion of losing cows, particularly big numbers and the sort of the stress leading up to the test, day of the test, you know, going through the motions and trying to keep. Uh, you know, focused on the job whilst that's, uh, going on. Vicky and I have 27 years, but we always say we've been married for 27 years, but only 25 if you exclude the time that we've been TB testing, uh, together.
So yeah, yeah, I think, I think there is an impact. Um, what has also been important is the sort of support of the farming community around each other, because this isn't just our problem. This isn't something that we're doing necessarily. It's something that, you know, a lot of our friends and Uh, neighbors and so on have experienced.
Peter Green
And how does that make you feel that there's that sort of empathy close by?
Max Sealy
Sure. Yeah, it's supportive and we learn from each other and there's lots of things that we've done, um, in terms of our involvement in wildlife control, in terms of TBAS, uh, biosecurity, uh, that we can all learn, you know, from each other and put those things into place to manage the situation and to come out the other end of it.
Whilst we are still shut down with TB, you know, I sort of firmly believe that we have managed the situation. We now manage TB on our farm in a way that's controllable. Um, and we've got through the losses, the big losses that we've had. So, um, yeah, knowing that there's some light at the end of the tunnel is the positive to come out of it.
Peter Green
Yeah, absolutely. Thanks very much for that. Ralph, I briefly touched on some of the impacts of TB in the introduction. Could, could you expand a little on why you feel TB is, is such an enormous challenge for UK agriculture as an industry, please?
Ralph Drouin
I think the reason we are in this situation, we find ourselves in today, we're saying that there has been some improvement latterly, is that we're playing a catch up situation for having failed to deal with the disease when it is at a more manageable level.
Easy to say with hindsight, perhaps, but really until culling was introduced about 10 years ago, the emphasis on disease control was all on cattle, which, um, finally when the government accepted the need for culling of wildlife, that they stated in writing that the disease TB couldn't be controlled if there was a wildlife host.
It had to be tackled in the wildlife host as well. The adoption of that statement 10 years ago, I think, as near as can be, has led to what I believe is an improvement. Certainly figures for the number of cattle slaughtered over the last 12 month period has fallen by 21%. It's still 19, 000 animals, an awful lot of cattle, you know, is put together, but it is a step in the right direction.
Peter Green
Yeah, so you're talking there about, um, I think when Owen Patterson, I should say, launched the DEFRA 25 year bovine tuberculosis eradication policy back in 2013, and back then 40 percent of the entire animal and plant health and welfare budget was being spent on battling TB, and at that time I think 28, 000 otherwise healthy cattle were being culled, so you're absolutely right to say those numbers have come down, but um, Your initial point there is really interesting, you know, perhaps if we'd had that conversation sooner, then, um, we'd be in a better position now and Max, you, you were nodding at that, um, Max, we, we talked there a little bit about how you've had to change your farming system, but before you've had to change before you did change your farming system, what, what were the really big impacts on, on you and your farming network of, of these TB breakdowns?
Max Sealy
Uh, the simplest one basically is a loss of income and loss of cash flow because we were losing cows in quite big numbers. Obviously, then, you know, our job is our business is to sell milk. So, uh, you're compensated somewhere just below the capital value of the cow, but obviously there's no compensation for the income that cow loses.
So, yeah. As soon as you receive that compensation money, you're then eroding that, funding your cash flow and your overheads, particularly when milk prices are low, um, until such time as you can start buying in replacements.
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Peter Green
And Max, we've heard there about the sort of impact that TB can have.
Before we move on, this series... It's about resilience. So what would you say resilience means for you?
Max Sealy
I think resilience is about understanding the situation that you're in and having a workable strategy to deal with it. So in terms of the TB, one of the big issues with TB is that you're working with legislation around testing and removal, whereas actually What we've tried to do as a farm is to understand TB on our own farm and to deal with it in terms of animal movements, in terms of grouping of animals and getting that sort of message through.
So, but it's difficult when you're under, you know, you're under the control of, of legislation. So yeah, you know, to be resilient means to be able to have a. Plan that covers the eventualities and certainly in terms of the TB, that's the wildlife situation. There's also TB endemic within herds. So it's understanding what sort of TB we have and then being able to deal with it.
Peter Green
That's really interesting because actually, um, the two things I'd like to pull out there. I think a lot, a lot of farmers that I've spoken to feel that TB is something which happens to them, but actually you're talking about being. Positive and active in combating it. And actually that's what government policy is moving more towards.
They're not talking about there being one silver bullet. Government are now talking about looking at epidemiology locally and seeing what tactics they can take to fight TB in different areas. That's interesting that that's something which resonates throughout. Ralph, what does a farm business that is resilient to TB look like to you?
Ralph Drouin
Well, the problem with TB is that it's unpredictable. Max has spoken about his losses over the years. Maybe he's been able to identify a pattern of how losses might be seen. It's the unpredictability of a TB breakdown, which makes resilience difficult. It's a question of surviving a breakdown. And my thoughts, which haven't always gone down well with dairy farmers is the biggest problem they have apart from the loss of milk through lack of compensation for consequential losses is the beef calves, whether they're black and white bull calves with low value or continentals with a higher value.
My feeling would be to rear those animals until such. a time as restrictions are lifted and to sell them at the optimum time. After that. Now, when I say that to clients, they say they're in the business of producing milk and not be farmers, so they don't want to do it. But to my mind, that's what I would encourage a dairy farmer to do.
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Peter Green
Sticking with you, Ralph, what role do you think vaccination of cattle can play in fighting back against TB? Well, the term silver bullet was mentioned earlier. It'd be wrong to think of cattle vaccination as a silver bullet because there are other things that farmers can do, other tools that farmers can use alongside it.
Ralph Drouin
TB vaccination. It's difficult to know at the moment, or it's not known at the moment, quite how cattle vaccination will roll out. So there may be things I say now, which in two years time would seem inappropriate. Biosecurity. Is word that's banded about probably never heard of it 20 odd years ago now everybody using it, but there are things that farmers can do to reduce the TB risk on their farms and if TB is considered to be a disease, like any other disease, Yoni's disease.
BVD, lepto, whatever else you want to mention, if it's approached in that direction, as opposed to thinking, woe is me, I've got a TB breakdown, there's nothing I can do. I can go on to some farms. I can see why they have a TB breakdown.
Peter Green
Okay. Could you expand on that a little bit? So, obviously, not thinking about any specific farms, but generally, what are some of the things, what are some of the areas where cattle farmers could improve their biosecurity, for example?
Ralph Drouin
I'm surprised sometimes how naive some farmers can be about the level of badger activity on their farms. Now obviously they're busy people, they can't know every inch of their ground, but they seem to be unaware of the presence of badger latrines, holes in the ground with soft poo, hard poo in it, depending on the time of year, made by badgers, nothing else really makes those holes.
And when you go around after a breakdown, you see, well, look, you've got badger latrines in the middle of your grazing field. It's hardly surprising you've had a breakdown in your cows or whatever group of animal were there. So I think there's one thing is to be if they had the time to enjoy a walk around the farm, perhaps a perimeter around the woodlands.
Southwest is full of permanent hedgerows, good places for badger latrines. Um, look around those. Fence those areas off with a single strand of electric wire. Keep the cows back away from there. Young stock, don't feed young stock on the ground or in a trough on the ground. If you've got to feed them, invest in some raised feeders.
Advise one client who'd been under restrictions for five years. The bison raised feeders because he had a problem in a certain way, grazed one group of heifers, and lo and behold, he passed his six month test two weeks ago. The next time around, yeah. Um, please just punch. So there are, there are success stories.
Peter Green
Max, um, Ralph's given us, you know, a couple of few things there that farmers can do. Um, How do you feel hearing that? Are those, do they seem practical? Do you do any of those on your farm?
Max Sealy
Yeah, absolutely. I think those are all, those are all good measures. I think we've all, through the wildlife control, the companies we formed and the information we've been able to spread amongst farming in terms of what their price was.
I certainly learned a huge amount when the culling started about better activity on my farm. Um, things that I just didn't really know and appreciate before that. So watching the tracks. set monitoring, latrines, all of that sort of thing. I was very naive to that situation. And at that time, you know, as we're going back, what is it seven, seven or eight years or whatever now, it just, just wasn't really educated in those, in what was going on.
So I think, you know, that sort of. flow of information has been really, really useful. Um, and I never saw wildlife control about it. It was all about understanding the population, getting the population down to a manageable level, but it's effectively TB is a disease of overpopulation. And then, yes, a lot of the things that we need to do on the farm change of our managing practices that Ralph mentioned.
I'd also include things like making sure that the water troughs, the badgers can't access the water troughs, limiting the access to feed. It is difficult because we're, we're an autumn calving grazing herd, you know, our cows graze from February to September. Um, you know, it's quite difficult to actually keep Mr.
Peter Green
Wildlife and cows separate, but if you understand where the risks are and you can manage them, then that's the way forward. It was really interesting for me to hear Ralph talking about a single strand of electric fence around a badge latrine because I've had one of the TB advisory service visits and that's exactly one of the pieces.
One of the several pieces of good advice that I had. And you sort of think, well, a badge is going to go under that. Yeah, of course they are. That's not the point. The point is that you're keeping your cattle away from the highest risk area. You're not necessarily trying to avoid all contact because that would be really, really difficult.
But what we're trying to do is we're trying to look at the risk and we're trying to manage those risks. So another thing that we did, we recently. I had some new doors put on a cattle shed. So we were looking at all of the gaps under those doors and making sure that they're three inches or less so that we're not, not getting any livestock into the sheds.
We're looking at our feed face and we're making sure that, um, if, if there's anywhere that we think we might be feeding concentrates that we can't get any wildlife coming in and coming up to the shed. So there are things that can be done. And I think it comes back to this point about. Not feeling like this is passively something which happens to us and that we can do some small things against it.
And, you know, we've talked about vaccination briefly, but it'd be good to get back onto that. Max, as a farmer, what's, what's your take on the usefulness of cattle vaccination as a tool against TB?
Max Sealy
It's got to have a role in the future, but we use vaccination for a huge number of diseases on our farm. You know, in our working environment, don't we, you know, pneumonia, we're actually clear of BVD, we're vaccinated against IBR.
So, uh, we're vaccinated against blackleg here. So we, with vaccination is a part of a disease control strategy. It obviously has some quite big implications in terms of the marketing of cattle from vaccinated, non vaccinated herds as implications in terms of how many herds would you get vaccinated and what you would need to do to build up that population.
Immunity, but I do feel that if we can do that and build up that resistance in the population, then that is sort of part of that long term strategy, you control the vectors, you control the disease, and then then you move to a vaccinated situation. And ultimately, I suppose, being able to weed out animals that are transmitting TB.
To get to a free status. Yeah, yeah, understood.
Peter Green
And so you just alluded to it there. Um, I guess, you know, we've just been through, uh, COVID and actually in order to stop the spread, it wasn't about making sure that COVID was completely eliminated, um, from the whole population. It was just about stopping the reproduction rate effectively, wasn't it?
And I guess, you know, that's something that we're looking to do here with TV. Um, Ralph, how would a farm vaccination program actually work? What would the logistics be? And I guess it'd be quite interesting to understand how we differentiate. Between an animal that's been vaccinated and one which is positive for TB is a reactor.
Ralph Drouin
Right, so in terms of this, we're talking, or I'm talking about the unknown generalities of it. The vaccination will be given to animals aged over two weeks of age. Who pays for that? Is undecided at the moment at a meeting local market 18 months ago, it was suggested that farmers might be prepared to pay 6 a head for the vaccine, and they would expect their local vet techs to administer the vaccine.
Um, there are a couple of other options, one of which was government official. They didn't like that too much. Another one was replicating the bureaucracy of the coal companies, which. No doubt you'll all be familiar with how difficult that was to do. So there's the idea that the vaccine will be administered.
Some people at the meeting hoped if the vaccine was administered there'd be no need for testing of cattle. But it would still be a skin test for vaccinated cattle, which would be one injection. And the nature of the vaccine would be that it would clearly differentiate between infected animals and vaccinated animals.
And that has been the. limiting factor because it's been known for over 100 years that the BCG vaccine used in humans five billion doses worldwide to protect the human population against TB has been effective in preventing or reducing the risk of TB in cattle. The problem has been finding some means of differentiating between naturally infected animals and vaccinated animals.
Now, with the DIVA test, D I V A, as it's abbreviated to... So, that's detecting infected... Detection of infected amongst vaccinated animals. Mm hmm. That has been the breakthrough which has come in. There's been plenty of evidence. historically and in the last 25 years to show that the BCG vaccine in cattle would protect some of the cattle vaccinated.
So in terms of that, there are trials going on at the moment outside our area. Involving about 1000 animals. Now, those results are supposed to be being made now. So we are talking about things as they happen. And so there is some difficulty, say, in 2 years time, somebody might listen to this and think completely wrong on that.
So I think there's going to be somehow or other, there will be some herd owners who will opt for BCG vaccination. of their cattle. And the advantage of that is, it will reduce the risk of a TB breakdown amongst their herd. Unfortunately, not all vaccinated animals will be protected against TB. Max has spoken about, um, using blackleg vaccine on his farm.
Well, with BCG vaccine, it fully protects about 30 percent of animals, partially protects another 30%, and doesn't do anything for the other 40%, which is where TBAS, biosecurity, Having an attitude of this is a disease like any other disease, we can tackle it by securing our feed stores, the water troughs, as Max said, putting a fence around the badge of set so you don't see.
What I saw earlier in the year was a badge of set in the ground surrounded by cow hoof fruits, a farmer who vaccinated in a high risk area and adopting good TB biosecurity. Should have a degree of optimism over and above the present trend that we have in fewer numbers of animals being slaughtered, that they'll have a clear test.
And as that rolls out, one of the benefits of the vaccination is it reduces the amount of infection and infected animal excretes. So that will lead to. a reduced level of infection to cohorts in the herd, to wildlife, if you want to talk about that, so that we may return to a position of far fewer reactors than we currently have.
So it has its benefits, but it does require I was going to use the word goodwill on the behalf of farmers to do their bit to protect their herd from what the vaccine doesn't protect. Yeah. Other risk factors. Yes. It's got to be a multi pronged approach. It is. All these things are. Yeah, what we're hearing from government and it's ringing true with what you said there.
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Peter Green
We've heard about the limitations of a vaccination strategy, but we often hear the question of why can't they vaccinate badgers? You know, why can't the wildlife pool be vaccinated? What do you say to that?
Ralph Drouin
Well, of course we can vaccinate the badgers now. It's possible to obtain a license.
A similar sort of vaccine is used, BCG again. It involves, for those of you that participated in the cult, very similar procedures of baiting badgers, trapping them, vaccinating them, marking them, and releasing them. It's suggested that they vaccinate for three or four years because, for four years, because the average lifespan of a badger is four years.
So starting to get year and note. There'll be some infected badgers about. If those are caught and vaccinated, the vaccine should reduce the amount of infection that they excrete. If a healthy badger is caught and vaccinated, the vaccine will protect that badger for longer against TB than if it hadn't been vaccinated.
So you're leading to a reduction in the amount of. Wildlife infection, plus there's a knock on effect of protecting cubs as well because they're not being exposed to parental TB, for want of a better term. So that should be leading a lower challenge to cattle, but we don't have the evidence to show that at the moment.
Peter Green
So, Max, if we don't get on top of the disease, what's the potential impact for the industry going forwards?
Max Sealy
If we don't get on top of the disease, which I very much hope we will. And I think, I think with the advice and with the effect of badger culling and more understanding of the epidemiology of the disease, we do stand a chance of getting on top of it.
And then with, with the potential rollout of vaccination, we can move to a situation where, where we can control it. But. I mean, the long, the short answer to your question is that if we, if we don't get on top of it, we will just see less and less cattle and less and less dairy farmers, which ultimately reduces the economic viability of the countryside, because you get a lot of people that shut down with TB for a very, very long time.
For whatever reason, they get clear of TB, have a couple of clear tiered tests, and they think, right, that's it, I'm selling the cows. The next generation coming in, and I'm very lucky, my son's come home To farm with me, but the next generation, if they see that as being your lifestyle shut down with TB the whole time, they're saying, well, we don't want to farm like that.
Thanks, mom and dad. So this in effect succession on farms, it affects investment decisions. So I think apart from the community and the sort of the emotional aspect of it, you know, the financial viability of a cattle industry constantly. Battling the TB would, would, would just be a, it would be a measured and slow decline because as we said earlier, we're pretty resilient as long as we keep going.
Uh, for a long time, but yeah, you can, you can see it happening around you. You're confident that your farm and your, your neighbor's farms and the Southwest will get free of TB in the future. Um, free of TB. I'd like to think so in my, in my lifetime, I'm fairly optimistic sort of person. I think the reality is we're moving to a more controlled situation where we accept responsibility for the disease.
More ability to work with AFA to manage it more managing it as an on farm disease, rather than just as a matter of legislation, we're going to kind of hold the numbers like Ralph says, because I think we've come from sort of 30, 000 cows to 19, 000 cattle being slaughtered a year. If we could keep reducing that, I mean, I always say that 25 year strategy was not called a 25 year strategy for nothing.
Was it? That's it. I mean, 25 years is generation, isn't it? You know, that's a lifetime of. Eradication and interestingly, we've heard at the beginning of this podcast that 25 years ago really was, was when this started to be a real issue, it was around before then, as, as Ralph said, but actually it's only really been a major issue for, for, for a generation.
It's obviously going to take a generation to, to get rid of a problem. That's taken a generation to build.
Peter Green
Yeah. Okay. That's, that's almost all we've got time for today, but before we finish the episode, it's time for our showstoppers. So these are three key points that, um, our listeners might like to take away from today's podcast.
It's never easy to pull these together, but I think it feels like, um, the discussion can be broken down into kind of a, you know, past, present and future. Almost. So the past. Refers to people who have had breakdowns on their farms, and I think the important message is that, you know, they're not alone. There was a lot of people that are going through this, um, at any one time over the last 15 years, up to 10 percent of the cattle in England and Wales have been under TB restrictions, which is a huge amount.
Um, so. Speak to people about it and how it makes you feel, you know, your family, obviously, perhaps your neighbors, certainly your vet Ralph's spoken to us earlier about the sensitivity that vets have to exhibit. And I'm sure I know my personal experience has been universally positive and I'm sure Max yours has too, but let's do feel this and.
They know what it's like. So don't be afraid to talk to them about it. But there's other organizations like the farming community network rabbi farm. Well, um, there are people who will listen and you're not, you're not in this on your own. So what can we do right now? Well, there's lots of small things that can be done, but we talked about understanding the situation and.
As we've said, it's important to, to understand that we're not helpless. There is a strategy. You know, one of the most powerful conversations I had about TB was with one of my vets who said, um, that the key message that they were trying to communicate was that it's not something that just happens. We don't have to just accept it.
As we've said, there are small measures that can be taken to improve. Biosecurity that can can really positively impact an individual farm's TB status. And to that end, we talked briefly about TBAS, uh, T B A S, but I. Couldn't recommend enough that people go to tbas. org. uk. Have a look around the website.
There's lots of practical ideas there. Um, there's contact details, the advice is free and they really, really understand the issue. So, um, do get in touch with, with, uh, the good people at T BAS and then looking forward. I think we can all agree that this isn't about one silver bullet. As we said at the beginning, it's about this multi factor control system and probably looking quite locally and seeing how the disease is, is moving locally.
You know, it's about looking at your feed stores, your troughs, fencing offsets, fencing off latrines. Um, there's a range of measures and we need to to have different interventions, um, which will be appropriate in different places. I recognize that talking about the impact of TV and cattle can be a pretty heavy subject.
Um, so let's lighten the mood with our closing question. Um, if you will, imagine a wonderful cream tea laid out before you. Scones spread with jam first and then cream. And then there's scones spread with cream before jam. The big question, which one would you choose? Is it jam first or cream first? RALPH
Ralph Drouin
Being a pragmatic fellow, I'd choose the nearest one.
Peter Green
Ha ha ha! Great answer. We've not heard that one before. I like that. Okay, Max, how about you?
Max Sealy
Oh, wow. Um, top that. I may be a Wiltshire farmer, but I went to Sealhane College in Devon, so there literally can only be one answer to that question.
Peter Green
Okay. So you're a cream first, Max. There it is. Okay. Well, that's great.
Thank you very much to, uh, both of you, uh, to Ralph drew in and to Max Seeley for joining us on today's episode. Next time for our final episode in this run, we're going to take a look back across the series and reflect. On some of the learning points. But before we go, I've got two favors to ask if you've enjoyed the show.
The first is if you haven't already, please subscribe to the show, but also give us a rating and review. We've got some lovely ratings already, but the more we get, the more people will find out about the podcast. Secondly, please mention the podcast to three other people. This week, word of mouth is the best way to spread the word about it.
So if you're enjoying it, please talk to anyone in your network who lives or works in the countryside about us. We really want to get the conversation started. You can also contact us on X or Twitter. Instagram or Facebook using the handle at Cornish Mutual and let us know what you thought of the episode.
Please see the show notes for more information on today's episode including the link to our podcast disclaimer. You've been listening to Farming Focus brought to you by Cornish Mutual. I've been Peter Green and until next time it's goodbye from me and everyone in the Cornish Mutual podcast team.
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Cornish Mutual. Farming insurance experts.