Tag Archives: Animal and Plant Health Agency

Cross Compliance

Blog, Scotland, The Vet Who Came In from the Cold, ,

On Friday, I headed out to meet S. S is a locum vet, currently working with the Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA) and she is being sent out over half of Scotland to cover welfare inspections on farms. Many of these visits are what are called cross compliance visits.

In the UK, farmers and land owners can apply for subsidies from the government. In order to receive these subsidies, they have to follow some rules that are designed to ensure that they are taking good care of the land and any animals that they keep. There are a number of different rules, some of which are for protection of the land from pollution and ensuring boundary markers, such as hedges, are maintained. Others are related to identification of animals via ear tags and so on, but the ones APHA are responsible for are the animal welfare regulations.

You can read a bit more about the cross compliance rules here: Cross compliance

When carrying out a cross compliance welfare visit, many of the aspects of care we look at are similar to any welfare visit. We check whether animals are being looked at regularly and fed and watered, whether they have shelter from the weather and from predators, whether they are protected from injuries, and if they are taken care of when sick or injured. If the farmer is found to be in breech of some of the rules, an assessment is made on how serious the breech is and that can depend on whether he or she knew that they were breaking the rules, how severe the effect is in terms of animal suffering, whether the effect might have spread to other farms and whether it is rectifiable.

For example, a farmer who has been warned before that she needs to treat her sheep as they are infected with the mites that cause sheep scab, but has let the infection continue to the point where the sheep are suffering and some have died, and worse, hasn’t maintained her boundary fences so that it has spread to the neighbour’s sheep, has ticked all the boxes for a very serious breech. She should probably expect to have her subsidy substantially reduced.

The vast majority of visits we do are triggered by other events. These can be reports from neighbours or the market or abattoir. Every year there are routine visits to a certain number of farms. A very small percentage are randomized, but most are risk based, depending on past performance and previous breeches. Most of the farms we inspect still have good standards of welfare though and most farmers are doing their best and do care for their animals. Unfortunately, there are a few rogues, and those are probably the hardest to deal with.

As I discovered in Norway though, it’s rarely as simple as that any farmer who allows animal suffering to occur is an awful person. Very often problems arise when something happens and the animal owner finds themselves in a situation where it’s difficult to cope and then things spiral out of control. There’s a risk that docking someone’s subsidy when they’re already struggling financially might actually have a further negative effect on the animals, so it’s a nuanced situation where some of the decisions can be very difficult.

Next week, I will be spending some time in my old stomping ground of Stranraer. Thirty years ago, I worked in a practice there. The practice is long gone, but the farms I used to visit are still there. A few of the names that come up sound familiar, but so far I haven’t come across the double recognition of a surname and farm.

I will shortly be taking over responsibility for a TB outbreak over there and the farmer’s name is familiar, but he is on (to me) the wrong farm. So I don’t know whether it’s a new farmer, or whether it’s the same family and they’ve moved to a different place, or whether two families have intermarried. That is relatively common of course. Farming families are often connected and back in the day, I also joined Young Farmers when I lived there.

My memory is not that great, but of course the few farms and farmers I do remember were the ones I was friendly with, either at Young Farmers or through visiting their farms. When I started, I had to declare any possible conflicts of interest and I didn’t think I had any to declare as I was working in Dumfries. But over in Stranraer, there might be some minor considerations. Should I be dealing with the farmer who was an asshole on a date back in 1993, do I have to declare it? Probably not. He’s had plenty of time to mature since then, as have I. But I’m looking forward to spending some time there.

Viaduct at Glenluce

And last but not least, my solicitor has now made an official, written offer on the cottage I hope to buy. Keep your fingers crossed for me please. All being well, by Easter I may have a house of my own.

A Latte with a View

Blog, Requests, Scotland, ,

A few more things have been sorted out this week. I checked my UK bank account last weekend and my first paycheck has arrived in the bank. That meant I could go into my local branch and set up a standing order for my rent. The teller did point out I could have done it online, and in time I will work on that because I know I’ll have to, but for now it’s a novelty to have an actual branch I can go into and people I can speak to that doesn’t involve a thirty hour drive to get there.

I’m enjoying the small things. I stopped at Tebay services on the way up the M6 and drank a coffee looking at the view. By the time I turned off the motorway and onto the A75, the sunset had turned into a line of liquid fire on the horizon, so I stopped for a moment and stepped out of the car into the frosty evening to capture it.

I completed my first welfare case at the beginning of the week. Hopping from tuft to tuft in a churned up field on a (fortunately) frosty morning taught me how unfit I am. The animals were in good order though, which is the most important thing. My colleague C came with me and she did something I had never once done in Norway, which was to ask the farmer if we could feed back our findings to the person who had complained.

So for the first time ever, I sent an e-mail message to the person who had sent in the report, explaining that what we had seen was normal for extensively farmed animals in Scotland. Muddy fields may not be ideal, but given the climate, they are inevitable and the animals are probably still better off outside. Housing them brings different problems. The law is different here regarding shelter. In Norway, some kind of building with walls on three sides was required. Here the shelter can be from dry stone walls, trees and features of the landscape and that is because the weather here is not so harsh.

C has been taking me out and about and has also been taking me to a few local haunts for meals along the way. We’d headed out so early for my welfare visit that I hadn’t eaten breakfast. We stopped on the way back to the office and I had coffee and an almond croissant in The Frothy Bike Co. in Dumfries. I’ve never been in a combined bike shop and cafe before, but there’s a first time for everything!

I also did some socializing, meeting up with old friends and new. On Monday evening, I drove up to Larkhall to meet Lara. I worked with Lara before moving to Norway and though I we hadn’t met for years, she was with me online at various significant moments, including helping me to write during Covid and being with me on Facebook messenger as I shakily typed in my first bid on the house I bought. We took a punt on a bar I found on TripAdvisor – the Applebank Inn. The food was good, the company great. Hopefully there will be a repeat performance in due course.

I also attended a writers group on Wednesday. It’s six months since I did any writing other than this blog and I made a pact with someone else who was struggling to make a start before the next meeting in two weeks time.

Yesterday I finally got Wi-Fi at home, and along with it, Netflix. Last night, I binge watched Fool Me Once., though I haven’t reached the end. This weekend will be the first time I’ve stayed in Dumfries, rather than heading down to Yorkshire. I have made myself a shopping list, which includes items like measuring jugs and a chest of drawers. Half my life is still in boxes at the moment and I need to find a cooking and eating regime that works for one person. I suppose I’d better buy in a few stock food items as well. They keep threatening snow on the weather forecasts and though getting snowed in here is highly unlikely, I’d look a bit of a numpty if I moved down from the Arctic, only to go hungry in Southwest Scotland because I didn’t buy in a few cans of beans.

Have a good week and thanks for reading!