EP9 Bluetongue: Myths, Misconceptions & Moving Forward

And, you know, this podcast, this episode is purely about Bluetongue and the escalating situation we're seeing in the south of the country.

particular.

So we're going to try and put to bed some of the myths and misunderstandings that are out there currently with the disease.

So I'm going to start and I'll, Ben, Sean and Guillaume, challenge me at any time if you think this is incorrect or not, but it's certainly to the best of my knowledge.

So the strain that has been picked up so far in the South West, let's say North Devon, but it's growing and that area is expanding, is BTV3, which was commonly seen in the Netherlands and Belgium and other bits of Europe in the back end of 2023.

And the first cases in England were seen in 2023.

And we've had cases every year since then.

So let's be clear, this is not a new disease.

It's not a new strain.

It's been circulating in GB or in England in particular since November, December 2023. what we're probably seeing now is what happens when you get the disease in a very dense livestock area and that's probably why we're getting so many cases we didn't experience that perhaps when we had the disease in the eastern counties but we are seeing that now and it's probably magnified by whilst we had a sort of dry summer last year this year it's been dry but it's been very very hot as well and that will add stress to livestock in particular sheep So hopefully that's one myth busted already.

We hear about the challenge on people waiting for test results.

So I'm going to try and explain as best as I can how that happens.

When a case of blue tongue is identified, so blue tongue is a reportable disease, when it's identified either by the farmer or the vet and it's reported to APHA either by the farmer or the vet, that is added to a rolling list of what they call report cases.

And once that report has been logged, it is then up to APHA to send or organise the private vet in England to go and collect some samples from the farm.

Now, three samples can be collected and processed free of charge, but your own private vet in England needs to pay for that.

In Wales, Welsh Government are supporting the vet visit as well.

Now, it's not up to us to debate what's right or what's wrong.

The most important thing is that there's three free tests to be done here to identify blue tongue on farm.

and you know if the vet phones APHA it's likely that the vet will get called back with the what they call the ERZ number and that number is critical to get the sampling done and all information on there hold the number animal ID needs to be correct anything missing the sample will not be processed till the end if it's a positive sample whichever animal that sample is linked to will not be identified.

And so they can't give you the feedback.

Information front end is really, really important.

So that's an ERZ in England and it's a WRZ in Wales.

So Ben, that's probably the first time you've heard that.

I'm going to use you as my bounce back.

Does all that make sense?