GOOD OLD BHS for taking a snapshot of the ragwort situation during the recent ragwort awareness week (July 12-18 2010) because there is no doubt that even in Scotland land owners and managers are still in some areas getting away with allowing ragwort to spread out of control on land that is adjacent to grazing animals.

(Please note it tends to be on road sides and construction sites and not on farm land that ragwort is found.)

I say ‘even’ in Scotland because in some respects we are much better off than the rest of the UK because the Scottish Government produced a really comprehensive Guidance on How to Prevent the Spread of Ragwort under section 38 of the Animal Health and Welfare (Scotland) Act 2006 in 2008.

This section of the Act gives Scottish Ministers the power to issue such guidance as they consider appropriate to securing the welfare of protected animals.

The Guidance was prepared and I quote “to promote good practice and good neighbourliness and to significantly reduce the risk of horses and livestock being poisoned.”

So, who is responsible for controlling ragwort – “The occupier of land where the ragwort is growing” and the guidance does on to say “When seeking to prevent the spread of ragwort in any particular area it is expected that all adjacent landowners, occupiers and managers will co-operate and where necessary take a collective responsibility for ensuring that effective control of the spread of ragwort is achieved.”

If co-operation cannot be achieved the issue should be referred to the local Rural Payments and Inspections Directorate Area Office of which there is a clear list in the book.

When it comes to this particular collective responsibility, horse owners have a clear role because under section 24 of The Act it is an offence for those responsible for animals to fail to provide a suitable environment and a suitable diet. So we as an industry have huge responsibilities in this respect.

The publication takes a risk assessed approach to ragwort control and high risk is where ragwort is present, flowering and or seeding within 50m of land used for grazing by horses or other animals or land used for feed or forage production. The booklet also contains masses of excellent information on ragwort control.

To receive a copy of the Guidance please send an SAE (£1) to BHS Scotland, Woodburn, Crieff, Perthshire PH7 3RG.

A second publication currently under review by BHS and The Animal Health Trust is our Strategy to Eradicate and Prevent Strangles (STEPS) and again the publication takes a risk assessed approach this time to complete biosecurity.

We are delighted with STEPS, not because strangles remains such a problem that we have to re-print the resource — that is very bad news — but this re-print comes just at a time when every single horse owner should be making biosecurity a priority and anything that spreads the biosecurity message is good news.

Also, strangles has such a stigma that it frightens people into good behaviour (not so sure if this is a good thing though!).

The risk of serious emerging exotic disease affecting our industry in the UK has never been higher and to this end we all must become more biosecurity aware.

What constitutes good animal biosecurity is a comprehensive approach to preventing an infectious disease affecting your horses in the first place and containment of that disease should it arrive.

The prevention part is so important and it starts at an international level as seen recently in work at European level to create EIA control measures. There are so many agencies involved in biosecurity, but at the end of the line it comes down to individual horse owners and they could all do worse than to familiarise themselves with the updated STEPS leaflet when we launch it next month.

Talking of launches, we had a great event at the Royal Highland Show when we launched ‘Discover Off-Road Riding – A Practical Guide’ by Kate Godfrey and Shonagh Steven.

This is a much needed book offering a fresh, comical and common sense approach to riding out. It is also a triumph of planning and months of work for the lady authors — a situation well reflected when Kate said at the launch: “It would have been easier for Shonagh and I to have a child together than to produce this book.”

Persistence that’s BHS!