Animal Health & Diseases
Animal health is important because major outbreaks of diseases, particularly on livestock farms can have the following implications:
- Serious welfare problems for affected animals
- Huge effect on business and the economy
- Certain diseases can be passed on to the human population
Examples of animal diseases are foot and mouth, swine fever, rabies, anthrax, sheep scab and avian influenza.
Find more information on these and disease control at the Scottish Government website under Animal Diseases: Notifiable Diseases and Non-Notifiable Diseases.
Animal Health Officers help enforce the legislation which is in place to prevent and control the spread of animal disease, but they also offer advice to businesses that are involved with animals. The majority of the work involves farms.
An important area for compliance checks is controlling identification and movement on farms, at the marts and the pier. Officers assist farmers in meeting their obligations.