Farming Today

04/10/24 Poultry register, fishing and offshore wind farms, TB in deer

Poultry keepers say they can't access government websites to register their birds. From 1st October anyone who keeps birds has to register with the Animal and Plant Health Agency, to help with monitoring bird flu outbreaks, even those with just one or two chickens. Failure to comply could mean a fine of £2,500. However bird owners who've tried to register say the system is not working. Defra says it's had a high number of applications and is working at pace to process them. It says it will be improving its technology to make it more effective for people to register.

Fishermen in the South West of England say they are "beyond frustrated" by proposals to expand offshore wind farm sites off the coast of Devon and Cornwall. The Crown Estate's latest plan includes thousands of square miles off Land's End and the Isles of Scilly, currently prime fishing grounds, and an expanded zone off north Devon. Fishermen claim they - and other EU boats - will be squeezed into ever more pressurised fishing grounds. Meanwhile, those in favour of an expansion of offshore wind are wondering why it's taking so long to get anything off the ground.

All week we've been talking about deer, just like cattle, wild deer are susceptible to tuberculosis, and there’s concern that they could transmit the disease to other wild deer, and cattle. In the Oxfordshire Cotswolds, a group of farmers, land owners, vets and deer-stalkers are one year into a project, looking into this. They’re monitoring the prevalence of TB in wild deer through drone surveys and blood tests, and giving hands-on training on how to spot TB in deer carcasses.

Presenter = Anna Hill Producer = Rebecca Rooney

Broadcast on:: 04 Oct 2024
Audio Format:: other

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Find us wherever you get your podcasts. BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts. Hello, it's Anna Hill here with the Farming Today podcast where we continue our week all about deer. Today it's about tracking down TB in wild herds. We also have how offshore wind farms are impacting fishing and if you keep a few chickens, you have to register them. But the process has become a bit of an ordeal. I did my best and I'm hoping that my hens and I can sleep peacefully knowing that we're not at risk of prosecution from the poultry police. We'll have more on that a little later. First all week we've been talking about deer, how growing populations of wild deer could cause problems for the environment and food production and what the prospects are for farmed deer. Just like cattle, wild deer are susceptible to tuberculosis and there's concern that they could transmit the disease to other wild deer and to cattle. In the Oxfordshire-Cotswaltz group of farmers, land owners, vets and deer stalkers are one year into a project looking into this. They're monitoring the prevalence of TB in wild deer through drone surveys and blood tests and giving hands-on training on how to spot TB in deer carcasses. Marie Lennon joined the training at the Cornbury Estate as farm vet Sam Eggcroyd carried out a post-mortem examination on a deer. We've got problems in there. You're starting getting this. You can see the stars over here. So we've got a two or three-year-old robot here. Everyone assumes that animals that have got TB, so tuberculosis will be coughing and showing signs of respiratory disease, thin, import condition and generally looking at them. We can get that. The reality is that the vast majority of them, you can't tell it all from the outside. So this little fella looks fairly fit and healthy. So what Tom's doing now is he's doing what we call growlic in the deer, so he's going to remove the internal organs and then we're going to have a look through those, because that's very often where you can see signs of disease that you wouldn't see from the outside. So I'm Simon Thomas. I'm a recreational deer stalker, and I'm a member of the syndicate at Cornbury Park and put a number of carcasses through the cheddar, through the larder every year, and take some home for home consumption, which I skin butcher and cook myself. So there's a series of lymph nodes that we have to check as part of our standard exam. So Simon, you're just saying that these ones here that we've got. But they still don't subbundibular. Yep, we've got a little clap here. Probably about the size of your little fingernail, maybe a little bit bigger. And if you look down the middle of that, there's a tiny bit of clear fluid that comes out but not a lot else. With TV, what you'll normally get is either sort of milky fluid coming out where you'll get, like, cottage cheese and pasta in there. Just on this side. So they sit at the top of the lungs just behind the window. I'm Cugh van Kützen. I'm chairman of the British District Society, and then I sit on the steering group. One small aspect of what we've been looking at is we understand some wildlife transmissions of TV. What we're doing is trying to get a better understanding of TV and deer, and if they might play a role. We've only been doing it for a year. We trained 55 deer stalkers in, you know, really getting really high-quality hands-on guidance in terms of what you look for, and that's just what we've had there with Sam when you open a carcass up. And then also the process you follow if you do suspect TV, and then what we've also been doing is taking blood samples from deer that were all part of management plans for the surrounding estates and farms and doing blood tests and sending them in. So we've done 300 blood tests over the last winter. Hopefully we're going to do the same again and maybe more, but we can make it more focused on particular species. I think it will really help us build a picture of what role, if any role, and that's the important thing we don't know yet, but what role might deer play in breakdowns? And then if we suspect deer do play a role, what are the sort of protections that farmers can follow? What is the rate of TV in deer around here? We need to do this for longer to build a better picture, but at the moment we found of the blood samples that we sent back, six and a half percent were positive for TV, which were deer that showed no signs of visible TV infection. We certainly wouldn't say definitively they do play a role, they don't play a role. This is still very much in the fact-finding stage. What's the future of this project though, because it's a new government. So do you know where this is going to sit in the future? We remain to have definitive guidance. It would be great if government engage with these local steering groups. You've got a group of willing volunteers working really hard to try and overcome what is a problem across the country. Hugh Van Cutzam ending that report from Marie Lennon. Fisherman in the southwest of England say they are beyond frustrated by proposals to expand offshore wind farm sites off the coast of Devon and Cornwall. The Crown Estates latest plan includes thousands of square miles off Land's End and the Isles of Silly, currently prime fishing grounds and an expanded zone off north Devon. Fisherman claimed they and other EU boats will be squeezed into ever more pressurized fishing grounds. Meanwhile, those in favour of an expansion of offshore wind are wondering why it's taking so long to get anything off the ground. BBC South West's Lucy Fisher reports. You couldn't have actually picked a higher density area of fisheries to choose an air-to-search area for a wind farm. Dave Stevens has fished these waters off Newlin for 35 years. The Crown Estates latest plans for offshore wind development have left him reeling. Two areas that they've announced say for the Silly Arts, they are the two areas that have got to affect the fishing industry and sequestering sequesters the most. It has the greatest domain of variety of species in that area. Every European nation works in that area and it's integral to the entirety of the sequestering from beam trawlers and nettors to trawlers. That would be a devastating blow if that went ahead. What would it mean for you personally? That's it. I mean, nowhere to lie we're finished. That would wreck. Air business model, the beam trawlers and business model, yes, there's business model at it. The entire sacrifice industry, you'd have to have a mass decommissioned scheme because everyone would be wanting to get out. The Crown Estate owns the seabed around our coasts. This is the site that's already been given the green light for development between Devon, North Cornwall and Wales. The latest proposal opens up potential for vast new sites. Up to 12% of these new areas off Lands End and the Isles of Silly could be turned over to wind farms. I worked the entirety of that area and you can't afford really to lose any of it because you work different parts of it in different seasons. How worried are you? Very, I don't think I've ever been. Well, I don't think the industry's been this challenged ever. Chris Ranford is CEO of the Cornish Fish Producers organization. We aren't anti offshore renewable energy. We're not anti marine protected areas. We're pro having some sense and balance and actually understand how we balance food security, which fishing is part of. It supports about 8,000 jobs across the county of Cornwall. For everyone, fishermen, there's 15 more jobs across the seafood supply chain. So as soon as you start putting things in the sea, without careful planning, we're going to start to actually take boats out of the water, which has a massive knock on effect then, to the wider seafood supply chain and the actual county and identity of Cornwall itself. But those in favour of expansion of offshore wind in the Celtic Sea say it's absolutely necessary to achieve greener energy and that they do want to work with the fishing industry. So these are very early days. What I would like us to do is to reassure people, although I'm disappointed that there was totally consultation. Steve Jeremy's been involved in the project from the start and is the CEO of Celtic Sea Power. There is the opportunity now to do it. These areas of search are no more than that. The danger in this is that we get into us and them and it really would be such a mistake, much rather than what we would like us to think it's much more about one at all. The Crown Estate says these are initial proposals. They will be consulting widely with all sectors, including the fishing industry, before revising the map to more precise areas for leasing. The project's been slow to come to fruition since it was given the go-ahead. A previous bidding round saw no investors bid at all. The government has since increased the strike price and the expectation is that subsequent rounds will be competitive. Lucy Fisher from BBC South West reporting. Until October 1, only poultry flocks in England and wells of more than 50 birds had to be registered with the Animal and Plant Health Agency to help with monitoring bird flu outbreaks. Well, that changed at the start of this month, and now every bird has to be registered, so even if you have just one chicken or banter in your back garden, it needs to be on the list. Failure to comply could mean a fine of £2,500. In Scotland, poultry owners have till the 1st of December to register. It's not clear how many birds are cared for in smaller poultry flocks across the country, but according to Liz Wright, editor of the Country Smallholder, it will be tens of thousands of birds. Well, since the deadline to register, a number of people have contacted farming today to tell us their problems using the Deafra system, which is online. Kyle Bell keeps chickens on his allotment in County Durham. So I've got 18 hens, one rooster, and six ducks. Most of us are on a Facebook group, and I got a notification about two weeks ago saying that you need to register your birds, but I hadn't done it straight away, so I'd wait about a week. And then when I went on the gov.uk website that they give us a link to, it wouldn't let you verify your email address. So I tried about 15 to 20 times on the first day. On the second day, I tried again, it didn't work, but on the third day, they said that the service is not available. How were you feeling about it because you knew there was a deadline, didn't you? So they put it in law by the first, I believe, and it's a bit frustrating, but it's not very well thought out. It should have been as simple as possible. Are they registered now? Have you managed to do it? I did just check five minutes ago, whether it was working, it's still not working. What about other people in your allotment who have birds too? Have any of them registered? Not that I know of because I've got no post called. Kyle Belver, well Peter Shorten is on the Cornwall Devon border. He and his wife have four bantoms, and when they applied, they couldn't access the website to register at all. We tried a little earlier in the year, weren't successful, so we sort of forgot about it because we thought we got plenty of time. 30 September, I think we heard a reminder, so go on straight away. You could log on, but waited to receive the verification code, came up with a verification code being sent to your email, logged on our email, no verification code, and that happened repeatedly multiple times. So we gave up. We felt there was a message on the website saying no online application available technical issues, but this morning they seem to have offered a four-page PDF form to fill in and email to them, which Judy has just done, and we haven't received acknowledgement, but we have done that, so maybe we're okay now. You think it's been sorted because you've sent the form off? We won't be totally reassured until we get that acknowledgement, but the penalties are so well-publicized, and then the system doesn't work, and that's the shame. It doesn't do anybody's confidence that much good. Well, Michael Pollit in Norfolk also found the registration system ineffective and spent hours trying to sort it out. When you sign on, you have to wait for a code, and it took seven hours for the first code to arrive, by which time, because it only lasts for 30 minutes, it then told me that it was an invalid request. So I kept trying and kept trying. In all, over two consecutive days, I spent nearly 17 hours wedded to my screen, receiving a total of 11 codes, including the last one at 11 o'clock one night, and I'm afraid at that moment, I just had enough. Did you manage to talk to the APHA, the Animal and Plant Health Agency? In desperation after many, many hours, I thought I would try, and I wasn't expecting anything until I delight. I was only third in the queue, and I spoke to a really helpful colleague from Defra at the APHA, and she promised she sent me an email with a link, which she duly did, but again, it's not actually that easy to fill in their email linked form. So I did my best, and I'm hoping that my hens and I can sleep peacefully, and that we're not at risk of prosecution from the poultry police. Michael, poll it there. Well, in a statement Defra told us they've received a high number of applications and are working at PACE to process these. They also ask people not to submit more than one application and remind people that you can still register by completing the form and submitting it to the customer registration team by email or post. That's all from us today. I'm Anna Hill, the producer with Rebecca Rooney. Farming today is a BBC audio Bristol production. Selling a little? Or a lot? Shopify helps you do your thing, however you chit-ching. 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