Implementation of Policy on Bovine Viral Diarrhoea (BVD)

The eradication of any disease in livestock is desirable from all perspectives as it can only increase their health and well-being as well as improving the productivity and profitability of people’s herds.

The potential higher health status of Manx cattle gives them better sales potential.
It also allows cattle to have healthier lifes.
It improves the growth rates and profits on Manx farms.

I think the current testing program is very well suited to Manx agriculture as trying to tighten up any of the timescales could cause potential health and safety problems by clashing with some animals mothering instincts.

I think that if a farmer had not culled a PI within 4-6 weeks of being notified of it being a PI he should be forced to cull the animal.

There is no direct compensation available at the moment, but there is a longer term compensation with the herd health benefits eradication entails so what more compensation is required. Also if it is a PI it has a negative value to the herd. Plus if they are keeping them they are not ensuring the welfare of their lifestock and should be fined.

it wouldn’t!! Compensation also encourages people to keep PI’s to claim the compensation. Compulsory slaughter and financial penalties would have a faster effect then compensation on the eradication of BVD.

Yes it would be best practice to segregate anyway.

Yes as it would minimise chance of contamination from any infected animals to herds which have made an effort to eradicate the disease.

If the animal is disposed of within 1 week of being identified I don’t believe there should be a movement restriction but if the animal is on the place for a longer period then i believe there should be a restrictive period.

Yes as all animals on the holding should have to have to be clear of bvd to move cattle to another holding.

Restrictions on cattle moving onto the holding could have finiancal implications for holders which have fully complied with all bvd restrictions and best practice.

Because again it causes a financial penalty to innocent farmers it should be the responsibility of the infected holding to ensure the animals are vaccinated and compliant with the bvd regulations and best practice.

There should be bio security measures put in place as well as a full wash down after handling or being near infected stock for everything and everyone. This should also include the disposal of infected stock with the animal waste plant wagons and staff picking up PI animals, not being allowed on another holding until the PI has been disposed of and then the wagon and staff being fully disinfected at the plant!!

Government should always educate and guide as it is more effective to inform and educate people of why they should do something, rather then it being ‘because I tell you so’.

The current ‘tissue test’ tags are easy to use and you generally have thd result with a week. So I do not see a problem with this as you have to go though other processes to import anyway.

Although the extra time would have financial implications the potential health benefits outweigh this.

Although I feel this would be a good idea it would be difficult and potentially extremely financially prohibiting to ensure and the fact that any PI’s would have to be killed anyway would hopefully minimise this effect.

I thought that the period earlier this year was to ensure such animals were tested. Also it is good practice to have no unknowns anyway!

I believe anything still alive 3 weeks after an unknown or positive test should be retested to prove its status and if it’s infected it should be killed.

If the keeper wishes to have an animal reclassified as TI from PI it should be on a blood test by vet fully recorded on the animal if it is to clarify ‘unknowns’ then re-sampling is an adequate response.

As long as this is only samples having to be sent off within a week of tagging. If this is to shorten the period in which you must tag and register the calves then no as this has potential health and safety implications and could cause serious injuries or death due to the heighten maternal instincts of some cattle within the first days of calving

I would be in favour of the department useing more test on the tissue samples to improve the health of Manx bovines even if it wasn’t limited to just bvd but other bovine diseases or allowing the farmer to have more tests done on the tissue samples even if only to improve genomics.

This would allow better monitoring of the disease by Manx farmers although it should maybe have a traffic light system so not to overly penalise the holders who actively kill PI’s within a short period compared to those who hold on to them.

If it is only an unknown it should be allowed to be retagged to clarify its status as sometimes the tag can be at fault so it would be unfair for the farmer to have to pay for it to be retested by the vet.

All of the official birth identification test tags should have the official number but tags for retests should just have a number to speed up the retesting process and also the speed up the pre-importing testing. Also management tags are for management perposes not official perposes.