Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:27 pm on 2 July 2024.
Llyr, thank you very much for those questions, and thank you as well for, broadly speaking, the welcome for this on the basis that it has been brought forward by people who've been advocating for this for a long, long time, including Dr Neil Paton, but also being brought forward with full co-production. We often overuse that phrase, but this is genuine within this area, with the support of Welsh Government officials, with the support of the office of the chief veterinary officer, and the veterinary sector within the agency as well. But it's genuinely led by those who are dealing with this day by day. It was at their demand. They said, 'We need to deal with this and drive this out of the cattle sector', for all the reasons we've said already. So, thank you for your broad support for it.
But you raised some interesting points there. One aspect there was to do with the support from Government going forward. Well, there is support, it's been support from Government to get to this point, working with industry to get here. There will be support in terms of bringing forward a governance body, which you've touched on. We do need some form of governance, but it needs, as well, to have significant direction within that, again, from the cattle sector itself so that they can adjust, advise on where else we might need to go so that we do eradicate BVD. So, it will have our support in doing that. We'll be bringing forward the databases and the integration of those databases so that we have, at the fingertips of farmers and their on-farm vet, how they can respond to incidents of PI animals, either that are within the herd, or that are brought into the herd.
We will, just to reassure you, as I said to Jane, work with the sector, going forward now in all the clever ways in which we can link to them to explain not just why this is important and why it is so well supported, but how this will work. There is a job of work to be done on this, because not every farmer is connected to a union, not every farmer has regular dynamic engagement with a vet on their farm to the extent that others do. So, we're going to have to use all of those networks of people that we have at our disposal. In the same way that we've co-produced this, we're actually going to have to take forward together the work to explain this. We've got a year to work with all farmers to say, 'You've got till next summer to get your screening, testing, done of your herd.' And it will vary from farm to farm in the nature of those discussions and it will definitely vary in the cost of this as well. But we've worked hard, in co-producing this, to make sure that we keep those costs to a minimum.
The resourcing around enforcement of this—I think that is an important point and I think the group that have brought this together would want to see the right approach to enforcement, because this is all about for the good of the Welsh herd in its entirely and driving out BVD from the whole herd. Now, I have to say, I can give you the assurance there that, even though our on-farm veterinarian services are very stretched, as we've said—and there are ways to resolve that as we go forward—my own, I have to say, very expert and very dedicated team under the chief veterinary officer are also constantly working hard to be right across the piste with this. I have no difficulties in giving the assurance that the enforcement of this in the right way, in the proportionate way in order to eradicate BVD, will be done, and it'll build on the work that's come out of the group's co-produced work as well. There is oversight of this, of course, from Welsh Government. Even when putting the governance body in place, which we will support, there will be oversight from Welsh Government, and, of course, from our office of the chief veterinary officer as well.
You mentioned whether this then points the way forward on other things. I'm very keen to point out that, whilst I really welcome the fact that this is a co-produced piece of work that's been led by the sector, been championed by the sector for some time, and we've now got to this very important point today, it doesn't, of itself, say, 'This is a precedent', but we do need to actually get on with scab as well. Now, I think what this has shown us is that there is a way of working with the industry to actually say what's the best solution. This model, I think, is absolutely right for this, but let's see now. I'm looking forward to bringing forward some outcomes of the work that we've been doing on scab, and sharing it with the committee as well, so that they can see it, and I think that's our next one that we move onto. But this shows a way that we can do it together. Thank you.