Veterinary Times editor Paul Imrie speaks to farm vet and consultant Rob Drysdale about bovine viral diarrhoea (BVD) and efforts across the UK to eradicate the persistent animal health problem in cattle herds.

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Rob Drysdale founded Westpoint Farm Vets in July 2000, and was managing director through to January 2014, when the business was sold. He works as an independent veterinary consultant to dairy and beef farms across the UK and Europe, as well as the pharmaceutical and farming industries.

Since undertaking a Nuffield Farming Scholarship, Rob has developed his own fully integrated dairy beef supply chain – StraightLine Beef (https://www.straightlinebeef.co.uk) – rearing 400-plus calves per month, and will finish 4,800 cattle in 2020, many from TB-restricted holdings.

The BVDzero Congress 2019 (http://bit.ly/BVDzeroCongress), organised by Boehringer Ingelheim as part of the BVDzero collaboration against bovine viral diarrhoea, was held in July in Cowbridge, Vale of Glamorgan.

The event featured speakers representing the four UK nations and Ireland discussing the respective approaches to tackling BVD in their jurisdictions. Scotland and Northern Ireland have mandatory BVD testing regimes and compulsory movement restrictions on virus-positive animals, but England and Wales have industry-led BVD screening programmes.

The aim of the congress was to discuss areas of alignment in the UK and Ireland moving forward.

A news story about the congress is at http://bit.ly/2lJyOdp and in the 22 July issue of Veterinary Times (49.29).