The Shropshire-based dairy herd belonging to Tim and Louise Downes has been awarded the 2017 HerdWise Best Practice award for Johne’s Control. Runners up were Andrew Harrison and Vicky Harrison-King for ACF Drax, from Millers Dairy at Wareham in Dorset.

A new industry-wide Dairy Antimicrobial Stewardship Group has been launched to create and implement a strategy delivering on a range of antibiotic-use targets due to be announced in October. 

A new YouGov survey commissioned by the RABDF suggests that only 4% of UK adults would consider all key aspects of working on dairy farms personally acceptable, casting doubt on whether future restrictions on accessing labour from the EU can be solved by recruiting from the domestic workforce. 

This month 2016 NMR/RABDF Gold Cup winner Simon Bugler from Dorset reports on the latest news from Pilsdon Dairy Farm and assesses the herd breeding policy

A new Business and Policy Conference is to be held in London on Wednesday 18 October, announced the RABDF today (5 June).  ‘Scoping the Future’ will be the theme of the event, which will focus on the UK dairy industry post-Brexit and herald a return to RABDF’s popular conference format which offers leading farmers opportunities to rub shoulders with policy-makers and supply chain leaders.