Blue Tongue Blunder

Galloway News April 2009

The voluntary ban on imports, to try and avoid the introduction of the Bluetongue virus into Scotland, has failed.  Is anyone surprised?  No I don’t think so.  I’m only surprised that it has taken so long to find a suitable candidate to be pilloried for breaking the ban.  If nothing else it has served to highlight what a ridiculous decision it was to introduce a compulsory vaccination policy against a single strain of the virus when there is more than one type circulating on mainland Europe.  It also highlights what an invidious stunt it was to impose a voluntary ban in the first place.

In the autumn of 2007 Scotland’s neighbour, England, had the Bluetongue virus serotype 8 (BTV 8) circulating in its midge population.  The Scottish Government kept a level head and decided that we should not vaccinate in preparation for a possible flare-up in the summer of 2008.  Their rational was that even if the disease did start to circulate in England in the summer of 2008 its impact on Scotland would be limited because of the nature of the disease.  This was a sound decision taken calmly after looking at the evidence from the experience of those countries that had been affected by the disease previously on mainland Europe.  

Amazingly by the end of 2008, England, after implementing a voluntary vaccination policy, had no cases of bluetongue.  This was despite being within shouting distance of mainland Europe where Bluetongue was ravaging their livestock industry.

At this point we were actually in a better situation to the one we had been in twelve months previously.  Not only did our neighbour not have the disease but we also had the comfort of knowing that, if the need arose in 2009, a vaccine was available for BTV 8 with the additional possibility of a multivalent vaccine being ready by that time to guard against the BTV 1 serotype which is also circulating in France.

Why the Scottish government, in this improved situation, after keeping such a cool head the year before, decided to go for a compulsory vaccination program remains an absolute mystery to me.

Their motivation to embark on this vaccination campaign was based on the notion that there was a risk of the disease being brought in by imported livestock from BTV affected areas in Europe.  But, by making their decision to vaccinate it was more or less an acknowledged certainty that some farmers would do just that.  The stakeholders, who were party to the decision making process, were surely not so naïve as to imagine that no one would import livestock into Scotland based on a voluntary ban that couldn’t be enforced.  Real life is not like that. 

From the importer’s perspective things are not too difficult to understand.  They are engaging in a legal trade where there is strong demand for a product and ultimately money or some other form of benefit is to be gained by those who chose to do it.  In some cultures this is encouraged.

Please don’t misunderstand me I am not condoning the actions of the people who have imported livestock.  I would dearly love to import fresh genetics from Holland for my own flock of Texels but have chosen not to because of the risks involved.  That was my choice.

However, for some of our industry leaders to take the moral high ground and publicly condemn those farmer’s who have made it their choice to import livestock may well be an inappropriate line for them to take.  Considering that the voluntary ban, which they so easily signed us all up to, in essence, relies on the livelihoods and the legitimate business activities of a few, but otherwise significant, farmers to be oppressed by nothing more than peer abuse and the threat of public humiliation.  That certainly might be construed as being immoral if not something far worse.

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