Dr Danny Chambers

Dr Danny Chambers

Liberal Democrat — Winchester

Speaking in the House of Commons on 3 September 2026

Debate

Bluetongue Virus in Livestock

Contribution

While we are in the middle of this outbreak, a lot of vets and farmers have made a couple of technical suggestions that could help us to deal with it. Obviously, we want to roll out the vaccinations as soon as possible and test as quickly as possible. First, under the specified animal pathogens order, bluetongue is classified in such a way that very few labs can continue testing at the moment. Not only is that slowing down the diagnosis of bluetongue, but we cannot test for other causes of abortion that farmers regularly need to test for. Secondly, for those practices and wholesalers that have managed to secure vaccines from abroad, a lot of their labels will be in Spanish, Polish or German. Should English-labelled product become available, can we ensure that they will not have to discard the previous perfectly good product, as that would be a huge financial loss?

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