Sir, – I do hang on every word our CVO, Sheila Voas, has to say about BVD.

You report her saying: “It all takes time and a bit of imagination to make it work for you.” I can assure her that no amount of imagination will make the BVD Eradication Scheme work for us!

There have been many cases similar to our own where herd status has been changed to ‘not-negative’ even though no BVD is present on the farm. In our case, the herd initially became ‘not-negative’ due to an unexplained positive antibody test and on the second occasion by a defective tissue tag. So far, this has cost our business around £2000.

BVD is a complex disease that no-one appears to completely understand.

In particular, transient BVD infection was and remains poorly understood. 

We argue that it is this lack of a comprehensive understanding of the disease that has led to the incompetence of the eradication scheme and the legislation has prevented uninfected herds from trading healthy cattle.

For many years loads of farmers, including us, have worked hard to rid our herds of BVD and prevent re-infection at considerable cost. We have always accepted that many other farmers have found the disease in their herds due to testing done under the BVD Eradication Scheme. 

However, for us, it is just a tax on our business which brings no benefit at all.

Margaret Taylor

Fingland,

Lockerbie,

Dumfries-shire