EU clamp down

Following an audit last autumn our lords and masters in the European Union are less than happy with AHVLA's licensing of cattle movements onto restricted farms.

This is the news release which announced the changes.

Following a recent audit by the European Commission’s Food and Veterinary Office (FVO), who are responsible for ensuring that Community legislation on food safety and animal health and welfare is properly implemented and enforced, the decision has been taken to end this arrangement with immediate effect as it fails to comply with the requirements of EU legislation for TB eradication.

Briefly, as we understand it, following a new confirmed breakdown, no movements on can take place until the removal of the reactor(s) and completion of a 60 day test. Should that test still reveal problems, then licensing may be applied for, but cattle coming onto the holding must be isolated.

There is more on the AQUs (approved quarantine units for young stock) and on beef finishing units, which we will add as we get solid info. At present it appears that the former may go altogether and the latter be restricted from buying further stock should a reactor be revealed either at testing or through abattoir surveillance. And that seriously limits outlets for stock from TB restricted farms.

Farmers Guardian has more points on this story, on this link.

SAM chaos - it " should never have happened"

Speaking in oral evidence to the EFRA committee on 1st February, SAM, Defra's new, all singing but not dancing, computer system gets a mention in the last few minutes of the video.

More of that session in a separate posting. But to save you ploughing through over an hour of yawning and banter important information which affects every livestock keeper, Farmers Guardian reports the highlights.

Asked by Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (EFRA) Committee chairman Anne McIntosh if she anticipated the problems would be resolved and when, Catherine Brown (Defra Chief Executive) said:

“They are not resolved yet. We are in the process of resolving them. We should have resolved them already. It is extremely urgent to resolve the problems.”

Errr yes. But to do that, first one must accept that there is a problem. And reading the jargon spattered blumph dropping through farmer's letterboxes about these computer problems, (problems of which farmers are on the receiving end) over the last months, one could be forgiven for thinking that such problems were 'minor' - if they existed at all.

Ms. Brown went on to say that AHVLA had put measures in place to mitigate the impacts of the problems on the ground and had ‘put in fixes’ to the system over the past two weeks. There is another batch of fixes going in on 2 February; there is another going in on the 9th.

"We are continuing to fix it as fast as we possibly can." she said.

.
(We understand there have been several hundred fixes to date - they are ongoing - ed)
Devon Conservative MP Neil Parish described huge problems faced by his constituents, including getting licences to move cattle to slaughter etc. He asked:

“Bluntly, why is it that, in the 21st century, the Government put in a system that they pay good money for and it does not damn well work?”

Ms Brown acknowledged that it ‘should not happen’.

“We have a lot of administrative staff doing things that we should not need to be doing if all those minor things were not wrong with the system. It is not a minor problem overall; it is a significant problem, and it is achieving our absolutely top attention, but it is not like one cataclysmic or hugely insoluble problem with the system that might mean it is never going to work. It is a succession of small things,” she said.

And that most revealing description of this AHVLA chaos is a far cry from the sanguine and anodyne load of tosh delivered to every livestock keeper last week which we reported in this posting and which was described here.

Apart from the glitches, fixes and other problems, we understand that SAM has a major flaw which could not by any stretch of the imagination be described as 'small'. And that relates to its data input. Once on screen, data cannot be changed without losing all the input. This is causing much extra input time if TB test data is to be recorded correctly. But worse than that, we have been told that once SAM's 'Submit' button is pressed, data cannot be retrieved for amendment. SAM has swallowed it and will not regurgitate for any corrections.

Which could explain why cattle culled in the 2001 FMD carnage are still appearing on some farmer's testing instructions - like SAM, they refuse to die.

Crisis? Wot crisis?

Last week, all livestock keepers in SW England received a letter, explaining new changes and "why they are necessary". Now 'change' - if not undertaken for the sake of it - usually implies improvement, but with Government in general and its computer technology in particular, that is rarely the case.

We given you several glimpses of the new SAM computer's chaos in previous postings. The present version of SAM it seems, can neither add up, nor cope with anything other than 100 percent accurate data. One mistake and there is no 'delete' button. The whole lot must be scratched and operatives start again from the beginning. Add to this toxic mix, AHVLA experienced admin staff received their marching orders just as SAM was launched, and were replaced by agency part timers with no knowledge of 14 digit eartag numbers or the 1mm difference in testing results which can mean life or death.

This recipe has given England's 'livestock keepers' severe indigestion, with some farmers receiving bundles of SAM generated paperwork, most inaccurate and many repeated - while others have received nothing at all.

But back to this anodyne and understated letter which explains that SAM will be the all singing, all dancing system which "improves the way we manage TB testing and other disease controls."

"SAM will enable us to do this by automating more of our processes, allowing us to to reduce the number of administrative staff we employ, saving the tax payer over £2 million per annum."

the letter continues:

"SAM, which will replace increasingly out-of-date and expensive to maintain computer systems, can also be used by private veterinary practices, who do the majority of on-farm testing, enabling better and quicker communication between us."

Sounds good? The reality is that vets are still unable to use SAM, that AHVLA's original Help Line number connected with a London solicitor's office and that at present, SAM is losing data, losing reactors, losing herds under restriction, losing historic test data and can't add up.

Our letter ended by dumbing down these many and serious glitches and an apology if 'you have experienced issues with the level of our customer service, for example by incorrect or duplicated correspondence'. Somewhat of an understatement, we feel.

But this week, Farmers Guardian reports that it has received sight of an internal letter about dear old SAM, and the terminology in this document is substantially different from our dumbed down sheet. On that 'time saving veterinary input', the paper reports:

AHVLA staff have therefore been forced to input test result data sent in by private vets, a time consuming process exacerbated by a glitch in the system preventing user errors from being corrected. This is often causing the ‘whole action’ to be cancelled, requiring the information to be manually inputted.

This has caused serious delays in processing test charts, forcing AHVLA to bring in temporary staff to reduce the backlog.

The knock-on effects have included, in AHVLA’s words, ‘confusing and incorrect’ paperwork for farmers, creating uncertainty over the timing and results of tests and nature of disease restrictions. There have also been delays in the collection of reactors from farms and the issuing of calf export health certificates, while uncertainty over the accuracy of data has forced Defra to postpone the publication of national TB statistics.

and of future data? AHVLA say they do not know when the problems with SAM will be ironed out, or whether more will surface.

... the agency’s chief operating officer Nina Purcell gives a fuller account of the situation, describing the roll out of the system as a ‘crisis’ and admitting that a number of ‘outstanding defects’ remain.

She reveals that ‘key fixes’ to Release 6 are due to be implemented in February by AHVLA and its IT contractor IBM. But she acknowledges the agency does ‘not yet know’ how long it will take to resolve the key issue of the link up between the SAM system and private vets.

So a review of the roll out has been commissioned. This will look at:

' how it [SAM] is operating and whether we are on track to meet the objectives of the original business case’

This is due to report at the end of February.

'Business case'?? 'Managing and controlling TB in your herds'?? ' Objectives' ?? And this describes a system which AHVLA describe internally as in 'Crisis', and which they have no idea when or if it can be fixed??

That sort of civil service-speke is guaranteed to enrage the most mild of 'livestock keepers', on the receiving end of such anodyne platitudes and downright lies from his so-called 'Service provider'. And referring to farmers tied down with TB restriction as 'customers' will enrage even further. The word 'customer' implies a choice of provider - and we have none. We also no longer have contact with a local name in a local office for advice on TB .... and now we have SAM.

Constructive ignorance?

We have spoken many times about overspill of bTB into other species, particularly alpacas. And we have spoken to Defra about this overspill too. Not with any great degree of success it has to be said - but hey, on this blog, we're nothing if not persistent, bloody minded ? tenacious.

We are aware of the cost and regulatory implications of flagging up bTB in group mammals other than bovines, but as cattle owners, we are equally aware of the problems which may occur for our animals (or clean wildlife), with onward transmission from such animals bouncing unchecked around the country, coughing up or excreting TB bacteria.
We face enough of that from translocated badgers.

From the alpaca TB support group we have data which just a handful of members have provided of their losses over the last couple of years. It is an eye watering over 422 animals. While another small group of alpaca owners, not members of this group, have lost a shed load more, with 28 going into Defra's mincer from just two breeders.

In July last year, hidden within a TB paper issued by Defra was the following snippet:

" We will be improving the current statistics collected for each non-bovine species to provide monthly statistics for the numbers of herds or flocks infected; number of animals’ skin or blood tested; number of TB test reactors and cases removed"

What Defra did not say of course, was when they would clarify these figures. And last week, we were alerted to a PQ answered by Defra minister, Jim Paice on just this subject.

Dan Rogerson: To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs how many mammals other than cattle were identified with or slaughtered for bovine tuberculosis as a result of (a) microbial culture sample, (b) reports from local veterinary practitioners, (c) gross pathology examinations by veterinary investigation centres, (d) disclosing diagnostic tests including intradermal skin or blood assays and (e) reports from Meat Hygiene Service examinations at abattoirs in (i) 2006, (ii) 2007, (iii) 2008, (iv) 2009 and (v) 2010. [89799]

Mr Paice: The risk to non-bovine species from TB is assessed as generally low and the surveillance system is therefore proportionate to these risks. This means figures are not collected or broken down by the specific categories the hon. Member has requested. Moreover, these scenarios are not mutually exclusive for a particular case and it would be difficult to allocate each case to one of these scenarios. In addition, TB in non-bovine species is not considered to have been “identified” until positive culture results are confirmed.

Figures from 1997 on the annual number of total samples from non-bovine animals that are (a) processed by the AVHLA laboratories and (b) found positive for M. bovis infection, are broken down by species and are available on DEFRA's website at:

http://www.defra.gov.uk/statistics/files/defra-stats-foodfarm-landuselivestock-tb-other-otherspecies-111124.xls

(These figures do not include the number of animals slaughtered from a herd where TB has been confirmed when M. bovis is not cultured from that animal.)

So, back we are directed to these damn statistics which only count the primary, single sample which a) confirms bTB and b) identifies the spoligotype. No skin or blood test failures and subsequent slaughterings, no deaths with TB confirmed by pm, and no knacker collections. As we said in our posting of 2010, all these have disappeared.


Defra seem to have quite a problem lining all their ducks in a row on this. They simply cannot count. This alpaca was not a primary sample death, so he too 'disappeared' - even with open TB lesions right up his trachea to his throat.


We aired the problem again in this posting as well. But the boss is more familiar with these duplicitous Ministerial shenanigans than perhaps we are. And while we would assume that these figures for alpaca (and other ) deaths are located 'somewhere', regardless of the minister's convoluted answer, he calls it deliberate and constructive ignorance.

SAM says 2 + 2 = 3 (or is it 5?)

Everyone, from the Treasury's bean-counters downwards to your lowly bloggers, watch Defra's monthly TB statistics for signs of change. Over the past decade we have watched the inevitable and predictable rise in slaughtered cattle, as bTB has spread, unchallenged, through an increasing badger population. Until now.

But as well as delaying reactor removal , churning out - or not - paperwork, Defra's new toy, a computer system known as SAM, appears to have trouble adding up.

The monthly tally of tested slaughtered cattle, herds under restriction and confirmed outbreaks of (cattle) bTB can be viewed on Defra's website on this link. But the stats appear stuck at August 2011, with the following information note:

As previously announced, the TB in cattle statistics for September 2011 onwards are being produced from AHVLA’s new IT system. Unfortunately we are not yet in a position to publish these statistics as there are still some issues to check and resolve. Defra statisticians and AHVLA are working together to resolve these issues and to minimise any delay. As soon as this work has been completed we will publish statistics for September 2011 onwards.

Good old SAM.

Cull areas announced

Today the North Devon edition of the Western Morning News announced the preferred sites of the two pilot badger culls. From the report...:

One of the pilot areas will be on Exmoor and the other around Tewkesbury in Gloucestershire, according to industry sources.

But there will not be a pilot cull in Devon – a major bovine TB hotspot county and widely expected to be the location of one of the two – because it was difficult to get a sufficient number of farmers to sign up in the individual areas.

An area of North Devon, however, is one of two reserve areas for a trial, if either Exmoor or Tewkesbury drop out.

In another part of this report, the privacy and security part of this project is again aired:

Natural England, the Government agency that will be handling the culls, will hold local consultations about the cull in the areas before they go ahead – so there is scant chance that the details about where and when will be a secret.

Now in his speech at the Oxford Conference which we touched on in this posting, Defra minister Jim Paice indicated that such actions were 'required by law'. By which law, or under what statute he did not explain, but cetainly when the Minstry's State Veterinary Service held the license, issued under the same part of the same Act, no such advance warning was given. In fact quite the opposite.

But then you can't believe everything you read in the press - this same article in WMN gives the cull area size as 30 sq km which could be a misunderstanding, a misprint or just plain mischief.

The pennies start to drop.

As 2012 dawns, farmers and their representatives begin to grapple with the nitty gritty of the 'cull plan' concocted on their behalf by Natural England.
This is the operating protocol to which we referred in the previous posting as :

the most complicated, divisive strategy imaginable ...

... but one for which farmers must bear the undefined cost and clearly defined publicity. It appears from the press this week, that questions which we asked at the time of NE's publication are now surfacing.
A bit late, but there are a lot of pages.

Farmers Guardian published a long piece on the 3rd January, with the strap line 'Badger cull ball now firmly in the farmers' court'. Or put another way, 'This is your badger cull, this is how it's going to operate, now get on with it - if you can. The article defines the key concerns of farmers, which are and always have been - the timing, the cost and their security.

Timing looks as if the two pilots will be late autumn this year (post Olympic fervour) so another year bites the dust, as do several thousand more cattle.

Costs we have explored several times. Jim Paice is sticking with his £1.4 million + 25% contingency fund up front for each 150 sq km patch. That equates to £920 per badger. But the NFU have done their own fag-packet calculations and arrived at around £20. Until that gap closes, then we agree with Anthony Gibson's comments (made before he was hoovered back into the NFU fold) and aired in the posting below.

Unless these proposals are radically altered in the consultation process – particularly in terms of reducing the financial and other risks to participants – I find it hard to envisage a badger-culling licence ever being issued.

Quite so. But then licenses were never meant to be issued under these proposals and the costs relate to the operating protocol set out by NE and to which the 'industry' apparently agreed.

The security question is vital with the farming industry now at complete loggerheads with NE's proposals. FG reports that as far as the farming organisations go:

The names of farmers, landowners and contractors involved in the culling areas will not be made public. Neither will the exact timing of the culling operations.

Natural England’s guidance, however, states it should ‘give the public an opportunity to comment on the licence applications’. This has become a key area of debate between the licensing agency and industry, which is intent on preserving the anonymity of those involved .

And that is the problem. In their proposals, NE even go so far as to describe a '28 day consultation period with maps posted on parish notice boards'. That is what farmers are being asked to sign up to. And this was hammered home by Jim Paice at the Oxford Farming Conference this week.
Mr. Paice reminded delegates that:

Natural England is required by law in each area to consult the public. We are in discussion with them about how precise the boundaries on those maps need to be,” he said.
“But I have to say as a countryman myself that once these trials are underway, the grapevines will work and I don’t think it will be possible to keep it secret.
“I am afraid farmers will have to take that into consideration when they decide whether to sign up. I don’t think there is anything more we can do in reality,” he told journalists, adding that he hopes this does not deter farmers from signing up.

If nothing else about this half cocked load of bureaucracy, that one paragraph is enough reason to hand control of a serious communicable zoonosis back to Animal Health, where it belongs. That organisation (or its predecessor, the State Veterinary Service) always held a general license and applied it under Section 10 of the Protection of Badgers Act when and if it was deemed necessary. Control of TB has no place in NE's portfolio. And it's no use at this late stage, the great and the good throwing a hissy fit when at last they are reading the small print of that which they've already agreed in principle. Or thinking they can change it.

This is bureaucracy gone mad, said NBA TB committee chairman Bill Harper. “Our concern is the maps used in the consultation will be too precise. We want them to be fairly general.”

and the NFU's John Royle added that:

the NFU was still trying to persuade the agency ‘not to describe the areas involved exactly’.

How exactly you do not describe areas, which by the terms of the NE license have to be displayed for a 28 day public consultation ? But as Jim Paice said at the Oxford Conference:

“I am afraid farmers will have to take that into consideration when they decide whether to sign up. I don’t think there is anything more we can do in reality,” he told journalists, adding that he hopes this does not deter farmers from signing up.

Really? You could have fooled us.