(originally published on the BRASS website in April 2009)
The Bluetongue virus (BTV) is coming to Britain. For the past two years, that has been the message from government vets and scientists. BTV is borne and transmitted by midges to ruminants – mainly sheep, cattle and goats. Its effects can be devastating: some figures suggest mortality can be as high as 60%. Over time, BTV has crept ever closer to the UK. Gradually, it has moved northwards from the Mediterranean through to the northern coast of Europe – a trend that some have connected to climate change. When climatic conditions are right, midges bearing the virus may be blown across the English Channel bringing the disease with them. The closer BTV has got, the more worried the government has become. So for the last two years, the UK governments and the agricultural industry have been making preparation for its arrival. So when temperatures rose above 15 degrees Celcius in April 2009, the Chief Vet of Wales issued a stern reminder to all farmers:
“the mild conditions are perfect for bringing out midges and allowing the bluetongue virus to flourish…All susceptible animals are under increasing risk of infection, including those farmed in upland areas”[1].
In fact, BTV has already found its way onto farms in England and Wales. In September 2008, the BTV arrived on a north Wales farm. This had nothing to do with a perfect wind blowing midges across the English Channel. Instead, Denbighshire farmer Owain Morgan had imported 7 cattle from Limoges, France[2]. In fact, it turns out this was not an isolated case. Reports suggest farms in Scotland[3], Worcestershire and Dorset[4] have also imported cattle infected with bluetongue. These events have all been touted as “biosecurity failures”.
But if these are failures, whose fault were they? Whilst some have been keen to blame individual farmers, the sociology of failure often suggests that victim seeking is part of the problem – there are usually broader more systemic causes to failure[5]. Perhaps in this case, the real failure is to understand how decisions about risk are arrived at and develop policy expectations accordingly.
For example, when Owain Morgan imported seven cattle onto his North Wales farm he did so under strict regulation. Regulations on cattle movements in relation to BTV are defined by the EU. Cattle can legitimately be moved between so-called protection zones under licence. The protection zones are designated by national governments according to levels of BTV infection and/or the time of year. Licences can be refused. Farmers within protection zones are also allowed to vaccinate against BTV. Did the regulations fail? Perhaps. In the aftermath, the Farmers Union of Wales called on the European Union to revise their BTV movement regulations. Where was the sense, they said, in classifying areas where the virus was circulating and areas where it was not as the same[6]?
However, the recriminations that followed the import of BTV focussed more on ‘responsibility’ than regulation. In Wales, the Minister for Rural Affairs Elin Jones urged farmers “to contact their vets today” and “to think twice about importing bluetongue susceptible animals from areas where the disease is endemic”[7]. The Liberal Democrat’s Kirsty Williams AM said:
“I absolutely fail to understand why farmers are bringing livestock into the UK at a time when bluetongue is circulating viciously on mainland Europe. Not only are farmers putting their own stock at risk but their neighbours also and this is something I cannot comprehend”[8].
In other words, farmers have a responsibility to look after themselves, as well as others. Farmers’ leaders were more to the point, questioning the “sanity” of importing livestock from infected areas[9]. One Union leader said that its members were “outraged with farmers importing cattle into this country” and claimed that events were a “sad reflection” on the industry””[10]. Another accused cattle importers of literally “throwing caution to the wind”[11].
Farmers were also encouraged to be responsible by vaccinating their livestock. The Welsh Minister for Rural Affairs commented that:
“we are only in a better position if the vaccine is used, and that it’s used now. It’s important that we don’t forget the speed with which bluetongue spread last year and we only need to look across the Channel to see the devastation it brings. Don’t be complacent. Don’t wait. Protect your livestock, your business and the industry as a whole”[12].
Similarly, farming unions said that urged livestock keepers to vaccinate “as soon as possible” stressing the benefits it provides to all individual farmers. They stated that “the future is in our hands” so “we cannot afford not to vaccinate” because “the alternative is unthinkable”[13]. Again, duty and responsibility – to the industry and fellow farmers – rather than regulation appears to be the key discourse of defence against BTV.
We might look on these calls for “responsibility” as appeals to the spirit of rural voluntarism that pervades much of rural policy: rural populations are strong because there is a strong ethic of community responsibility – “Gemeinschaft” to use Tönnies’ expression[14] – and do not need public intervention[15]. Indeed, the agricultural industry had already shown that it was committed to acting responsibly towards BTV by setting up a partnership with veterinary organisations to encourage vaccination – known as JABs[16]. That these appeals for responsible farming seem to have fallen on deaf ears may say something about the declining influence of the farming unions. Indeed, the unions’ responsibility rhetoric may be connected to their attempt to demonstrate that they can bring something to the animal health policy table: in return for the government ordering sufficient quantities of Bluetongue vaccine, the unions promised to get their members to use it[17]. No wonder then, that when the unions’ lack of influence was exposed, politicians threatened to tear up the deal[18].
For some experts though, vaccination was not simply about being responsible, it was as one put it “a no-brainer”[19]. A no-brainer? In fact vaccination tells us a lot about the effectiveness of responsibility. Whilst farmers and politicians were criticising those bringing cattle into the UK with Bluetongue, the uptake of BTV vaccination – perhaps a key indicator of any measure of responsibility – was extremely low. In Wales, farmers had used only 26% of the 7.5m doses of bluetongue vaccine available in Wales[20]. The Rural Affairs Minister for Wales was “very disappointed” with the take-up and “planned to write to every farmer to urge vaccination”. Elsewhere, farmers were judging whether to bother with the vaccine: they were waiting for the risk to move closer, or for a different phase of the farming cycle[21].
Following the outbreak in North Wales, more farmers began using the vaccine. But in Wales and elsewhere, confidence in the vaccine slumped when rumours connected it to poor fertility. One farmer in Cumbria said "I've decided to leave my vaccine in the fridge until the spring," said one Cumbria suckled calf producer. "I want my cows safely in calf and a crop of calves on the ground before I start to jab"[22]. Another said, "It's been the worst summer and autumn we can remember and stock have suffered. If we jab sheep that are clearly under pressure at a critical time of year we may be at risk of dealing ourselves another body blow". Governments sought to reassure farmers: in Wales, Elin Jones said that her planned letter to farmers urging vaccination would also “counter rumours of links between the vaccine and infertility and abortion for which there was no scientific evidence”[23].
These events suggest was that the responsibility of vaccination was anything but a no-brainer. The idea that farmers (or anyone) would simply follow government or scientific advice to behave in a particular way fails to understand the complexity of decision making associated with risk management. Firstly, in numerous contexts – from public to animal health – studies of risk show how variable our risk interpretations and thresholds are. We all make different decisions based on the risks that we judge for ourselves. Other studies of farmers also show the varied motivations that underline their decisions to enter into agri-environment schemes for example. Similarly, the vast literature on “styles of farming” explains how different world-views of farming affects the ways by which farming gets done. So it should come as no surprise to see farmers thinking for themselves and weighing up the relative risks about whether to import cattle from France, or thinking about whether it is economically or practically worthwhile to vaccinate sheep. This is why in the high risk area of the south-east of England bluetongue uptake of bluetongue vaccination is around 80%[24], whilst farmers in low-risk Wales are openly declaring they have no intention of vaccinating[25].
Secondly, trust is one inevitable obstacle that new agricultural policies face. In recent years, trust between agriculture and government has decline to an all time low. Farmers believe the government does not want to help them. They point to the fiasco over the Rural Payments Agency, and more recently to the decisions taken over bovine tuberculosis and the failure to cull badgers[26]. The rumours swirling around the BTV vaccine are much the same thing. Attempts to write to every farmer in Wales to convince them that the vaccine is safe are unlikely to make much difference. In fact, this simplistic approach to communicating animal health may encourage farmers to act in the opposite direction[27]. Similarly, in other policy areas such as public health, the MMR controversy showed that simple top-down messages from governments declaring that something was safe do not work. But we can also go back to the BSE crisis to demonstrate this facet of the risk society. As Brian Wynne showed in his seminal paper on risk, trust is vital in developing new farming behaviours, and needs to be developed through closer understandings of different social identities and ways of living[28].
Perhaps this naïve belief in the power of responsibility stems from politicians reluctance to impose further regulations upon agriculture. Yet in Scotland, the Scottish Executive have made vaccination compulsory and agreed to part fund its implementation[29]. Alternatively, the belief in the power of responsibility may stem from policy makers’ hesitancy to commission social research that seeks to understand how farmers’ make sense of animal health risks. Whilst there is much to learn from studies of risk and health from the sociology of public health, there is little in the way of animal health. This has not gone unnoticed. Defra’s own Science Advisory Council concluded recently that there is a need for more social research to help understand the problems facing agriculture and identify more appropriate solutions[30]. The idea that problems with Bluetongue should be seen as a “biosecurity failure” seems misplaced. Instead these problems might be systemic policy failures, a key part of which might be a failure to seek out and understand how farmers react to and understand animal health risks, and a failure to implement appropriate policies rather than those that never looked like they would work.
[1] http://www.walesonline.co.uk/countryside-farming-news/farming-news/2009/04/21/vaccinate-now-against-bluetongue-chief-vet-91466-23429498/
[2] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/north_east/7624029.stm
[3] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/south_of_scotland/7163612.stm
[4] http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/2008/09/12/bluetongue-found-in-imported-cattle-91466-21806740/
[5] Perrow C, 1999 Normal Accidents: Living with High-risk Technologies (Princeton University Press,
Princeton, NJ)
[14] Tönnies, F. (2001. Ed. J. Harris) Community and Civil Society. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge
[15] For more on this see Murdoch, J. 1997 The shifting territory of government: some insights from the Rural White Paper. Area, 29, 109–18.
[16] Joint campaign Against Bluetongue. For more information see: http://www.nfuonline.com/x26381.xml
[21] Farming Today, BBC Radio 4, 29th September, 2008.
[26] Enticott, G. (2008) “The ecological paradox: social and natural consequences of the geographies of animal health promotion”. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 33 433–446.
[27] Ibid.
[28] Wynne, B. 1992 Misunderstood misunderstanding: social identities and public uptake of science. Public Understanding of Science, 1 281–304
