James’ sustainability pledge: Ensuring agricultural policy health and welfare goals are sustainable

In thinking about my sustainability pledge for 2022 I have been considering what we achieve as vets for the environment. Vets not only have a vital role to play in helping to make their own workplaces more environmentally friendly, but can also add their great mix of experience and knowledge to conversations around sustainability.

Vets are well placed to engage in actions to reduce the environmental impact of the profession, wider industry, and the communities they serve. As a BVA officer I am fortunate to be in an especially strong position to help influence others, and to help ensure vets are included in key sustainability conversations. 

The role of production animal vets

As a production animal vet, I have long felt that my biggest opportunity to positively influence the sustainability of our food production industry was to minimise wastage within it. Farmer and vet alike will feel defeated by a heifer that dies calving without ever having given a drop of milk, although a certain amount of this is inevitable. The losses that really hurt are the wasting animal with BVD, or the wormy sheep you just can’t get right. These animals are set to become a dead loss, and take all the carbon cost of their production to the incinerator with them.

By collaborating with farmers to implement herd health and welfare plans which prevent and control disease, we can help them to increase efficiency to improve sustainability. Veterinary surgeons are uniquely placed to advise and influence sustainable animal husbandry practices at whole-system levels, safeguarding animal health and welfare and influencing sustainable future livestock and food production. Across the sector, production animal vets have the potential to influence huge numbers of farmers, meaning we could have a significant impact overall.

As an evidence-based, scientific profession there are a multitude of ways that vets can actively contribute to the sustainable animal agriculture agenda. There are many day-to-day actions we can take at individual, practice and association level which make a difference, summarised brilliantly by the BVA Sustainability and the veterinary profession: Action plan.

My pledge

Through my work as a BVA officer, I recognise that I have an excellent opportunity to ensure the veterinary voice is considered in important government discussions.

Changes to agricultural policy since leaving the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) offers an exciting opportunity to work closely with farmers to improve animal health and welfare outcomes on farm. BVA has held a seat on the steering group designing the Animal Health and Welfare Pathway in England, and we have been working closely with government, industry and the farming sector to ensure the vet-farmer relationship, that is so pivotal to improving outcomes on farm, is at the heart of that. We are also in regular contact with our farm animal divisions and their efforts and support have been greatly appreciated.

My pledge is therefore to do my best to help ensure that the health and welfare goals that we set out in that Pathway are sustainable. I also commit to support the future farming policy across the devolved nations, working closely with Branch Officers, and to apply the same veterinary logic of healthy sustainability wherever I am able.

Vets remain uniquely positioned to support our farming clients as they push towards net zero by 2030 (an NFU goal), so I pledge to use any avenue I can to support the relationships and the expertise to deliver on that objective.

Regardless of the sector we work in, we all have a role to play in making our profession greener. Please make your pledge online, and let us know what you have committed to doing using #GreenTeamVet on social media.