Correspondence re: the relationship between dairy vets and dairy cows

MATTHEW WATKINSON WEB: http://ww.fishsnorkel.com • TWITTER: http://twitter.com/fishsnorkel

1st November 2010 The Editor Veterinary Record BMJ Group BMA House Tavistock Square London WC1H 9JR Dear Editor, With reference to Jon Huxley and Martin Green’s call (Veterinary Record 30/10/2010) for the veterinary profession to “lead the debate” about “the health and welfare of all the food animals under our care”, I would like to respectively suggest that members of the veterinary profession are some of the last people that should be leading such a debate.

They are just too dependent on the status quo. Where would dairy vets be without infertility for example? It is widely accepted that this problem has been getting worse for at least forty years (the BCVA emerged about 40 years ago by the way), but it has also been publicly suggested that the “dairy sector is the biggest employer of farm animal veterinary time, generating about £30 million of fee income for the profession each year” (Dick Sibley), and that shifting revenue pressures has “put greater emphasis on the need to get fee income from...dairy fertility work [among other things]” (Peter Orpin), which, as it seems to me, means dairy vets wouldn’t be anywhere near where they are today without the profitable consequences that predictably follow extreme physiological overload (I will ignore the veterinary profession’s role in specifically selecting for this extreme physiological overload for the time being: “hardly any one is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed” (Charles Darwin), and indeed the hyper-technical misdirection that constantly seems to follow its consequences: “these thin, scouring, lame cows aren’t cycling properly; it must be a lack of research into the hormonal sensitivity of the corpus luteum!”).

Mr Sibley also went on to suggest that “if you want to get into cattle vetting in a big way, then dairy cows will provide you with a secure living and a rewarding career”, but can I go on to suggest that it would be a lot less secure without the vast amounts of money currently being generated by their BCVA-supervised reproductive collapse. As Mr J. F. D. Tutt observed in the Veterinary Record in 1935: “in the contest between the uterus and the udder, the uterus has been defeated”, and it’s upon this victory that the relentless pursuit of supra-humane production continues and the dairy sector of the veterinary profession now makes a “secure” £30 million a year (up from zero at some point in last 200 years).

It is no coincidence that 3 million dairy animals generate a lot more ‘secure livings’ and ‘rewarding careers’ than 6 million beef animals (http://ht.ly/32niS). Indeed, in 2006, 35% of the cattle population (and probably a lot less if we could focus more specifically on just adult dairy cows) were filling 73% more practice time than the remaining 65% put together (http://ht.ly/32nWM), and that should leave nobody in any doubt about the financial value of pushing cows beyond their limits and the existence of a serious conflict of interest. Not only are vets unable to speak freely because of the need to keep their clients happy (something I call the muzzle of conflicting objectives, or the anti-

integrity muffler, or the ineffective diplomacy gag etc. etc.), they’re also conflicted by their parasitic reliance on the continued existence of the very problem they’re claiming to fight; a paradox that didn’t slip past Friedrich Nietzsche anywhere near as completely as it continues to slip past the veterinary profession: “Whoever lives for the sake of combating an enemy has an interest in the enemy's staying alive.”

No, I’m afraid the veterinary profession has had its chance to lead the debate. Seventy years of it to be precise(ish). It has been working with dairy farmers since the Second World War and yet, as Mr Huxley and Mr Green sub-definitively point out, “based on both the published literature and the subjective assessments of specialised clinicians working in the field, many would argue that there has been a relative decline in the overall health and welfare of dairy cattle.”

The BCVA disagrees of course (in its marketing propaganda): “livestock in this country have never been accommodated and cared for better.” As does its confidently dismissive former president (John Blackwell): “if things are so bad how many prosecutions of dairy farmers have there been over the past 12 months?” And perhaps they’re right: perhaps everything is as good and unprosecuted as never before.

Alternatively, however, perhaps this public loyalty can be interpreted as the tip of a much larger malaise. The sort of much larger malaise that might explain DEFRA’s observation regarding the veterinary profession and its sensitivity to lameness (http://ht.ly/31V5x): "There is evidence that veterinary surgeons underestimate the level of cattle lameness more than herdsman."

This conclusion certainly wasn’t undermined by the findings of a recent paper in Research in Veterinary Science (Leach et al http://ht.ly/31UVT), because it also provided clear evidence that vets supervising dairy farms are making no effective noise about lameness whatsoever, despite a mean prevalence of every third cow: “Ninety percent of farmers [on 222 farms] did not perceive lameness to be a major problem on their farm, although the average prevalence of lameness was 36%.”

And Professor Philip Lowe didn’t do much to assuage such doubts in his report on the level of veterinary expertise in food production either (http://ht.ly/31VaE): “The roles, responsibilities and even the basic training and competence of veterinarians in relation to the welfare of farm animals are unclear.”

In fact, if you put it all together there can be little rational doubt that the veterinary profession is restrained by some immense conflicts of effectiveness, fuelled by some immense conflicts of interest (I still can’t believe herd health plans are being endorsed by people with a vested interest in keeping the endorsee happy), that should urgently preclude it from having anything other than a minor technical role in debates about the health and welfare of all the food animals under its care, never mind a leading role.

Yours faithfully,

Matthew Watkinson