Payments for both the animal health and welfare review and the endemic disease follow-up in England will increase from January 22.
For pigs, the review payment will rise from £557 to £648, while the follow-up payment will increase from £923 to £1,087 from that date.
Defra said the increase reflects inflation and will help ensure farmers can continue to access high-quality support, while allowing vets enough time to provide a thorough and valuable service.
What the visits entail
During the review, a vet of your choice will assess health, welfare and farm conditions, including animal condition, housing, nutrition, water and handling. The vet will:
- Review disease risks and biosecurity, looking at how disease could enter or spread and how it is currently controlled.
- Carry out required disease testing by taking samples to check for PRRS
- Discuss medicine use and improvements, including reviewing antibiotics and medicines and agreeing priority actions for improvement.
After the visit, you’ll receive a written summary with clear recommendations, a plan to manage disease and improve welfare and a baseline to measure progress over time.
The endemic disease follow-up is another optional, funded visit that builds on your animal health and welfare review. It focuses on controlling specific diseases that affect your animals. During the visit, the vet will:
- Review disease issues and test results, look at any ongoing health problems and discuss what the results show.
- Assess current disease controls and check how well existing measures are working and where improvements could be made.
- Agree a practical disease plan which sets out clear actions to reduce disease risk and improve animal health.
After the visit, you’ll receive a targeted disease control plan, advice tailored to your system and
support to deliver long-term improvements.
Agreements
If you are an existing agreement holder, you do not need to do anything now. In January, once the increased payment rates are in place, the RPA will write to you with a variation to your agreement’s terms and conditions to reflect the new funding levels.
If you don’t have agreement, if you have at least 51 pigs, you can apply for an Improve Animal Health and Welfare (IAHW) agreement, which must be approved and in place before you start any actions from your review or follow-up visit.
You will need your Rural Payments service Customer Reference Number (CRN) and password to apply. The application usually takes around 5 minutes to complete.
The RPA has created a series of short video, including one for pigs (this references the old payment rates).