Famers hear how to ‘Look after your health and your herd’ at latest meeting of Grassland Club
The members of Fermanagh Grassland Club were in for a treat in March when eminent qualified doctor and vet, Professor Patrick Wall, Dublin, was the speaker at their meeting in the Killyhevlin Hotel, Enniskillen.
As Professor of Public Health at UCD, he last addressed the Club in 2012. Professor Wall is a qualified doctor, a qualified veterinarian and holds an MBA and has a long history of work on food security.
He took as his topic, “Looking after your health and your herd.”
He told farmers that their profession of farming was a job that added value to society but their most important asset was their health. Mental health, he said, was just as important as physical health.
“You have to work at being positive but how do you recharge your batteries?” he asked suggesting farmers need a pastime to switch off from farming.
He said he learned a lot from people in countries such as those in the Far East especially in terms of their diet and health. Yet he said pharmaceutical companies in the UK are administering drugs to keep people healthy.
He looked at various farm animals’ production systems and compared these to people’s health, especially those in older years and how nutrition was vitally important.
He reminded farmers they were in the nutrition business as a result of food they produced. It is important for farmers to realise they were involved in public health, consumer confidence and regulatory compliance and checks means that food ingredients can be traced back to farms.
He went on to discuss the challenges for food producers such as food fraud, the threat of Bluetongue disease, TB breakdowns and environmental impacts.
There is a lot of work on genetics and climate smart diets and he said farmers should be in the driving seat. Precision agriculture, he said, can help improve biosecurity and protect the environment.