Health & Safety Executive, cattle, people, dogs

This report is a bit of an eye-opener.

“Farmers should not place cattle with calves in fields where members of the public have a legal right to walk.

Farmer fined after cow attack left man fearing for his life

Thoughts?

https://www.hsmsearch.com/Land-owner-cows-attack-civilians

Recommendations have been made before. 

“Should not”  is just advisory

The amount of land that the public have a legal right to walk on is a tiny % of the country.

Doesn’t seem unreasonable they should take steps to ensure it is isn’t overtly dangerous to do so. 

Can see it both ways, farmers gotta farm and if you’re a dog owner and don’t know the risks then more fool you. Om the other hand people have died, there the legal access principle at risk and last but not least its not always possible to see the cows until its too late in some fields.

Honestly dont know which way to go on this one, lots of terrible farmers out there trying to erode access rights, loads of thoughtless entitled dog walkers as well. On the other hand theres plenty of farmers who really are stewards of the land desperately trying to make a living as well as responsible and careful dog walkers.

HSE seem to be on the fence with should not vs must not.

If you want “open access” then this is a risk you face. Those recommendations simply couldn’t be followed in Scotland. Maybe the answer is to ban dogs?

‘Should not’ because the HSE can’t put a blanket ban on it.

They would have to identify the individual farms (business) that are doing it and serve an improvement notice or even a prohibition notice on that specific farm/business.

But as guidance, with a (hopefully) thinly veiled threat that they will prosecute all they learn have not heeded the guidance, is a good thing.  

Owning or leasing land (that was in the majority of cases stolen from the populous and given to cronies, who then sold this onto others or still extort £££ rent each week) comes with responsibilities. 

Thanks for that link. That farmer deserved everything he got for his dangerous and irresponsible behaviour.

Are these recommendations being acted upon, are you aware?

It’s getting hard for farmers to keep up with all this, think there needs to be a bit more planning and assistance from local councils in this type of thing, instead of just continuing with some path running through a field, i’ve cycled around this area many times, there’s not much in Monkton Farleigh, nice pub back in the day, but you’d go walking around Brown’s Folly rather than through a field, especially with a dog in tow. It was the same with the guy who died down near Turleigh (near Bradford on Avon again) about a decade ago, in all my time riding around there, i never went through the field with cattle, only the farm roads that intersected the fields.

Most of the incidents i’ve known off, it’s just people treating 500kg to 1000kg of meat on legs, that can move faster than them as being docile, not giving them enough room, or more importantly, not keeping your distance from them whilst knowing the nearest exit if they move, yes, farmers need to not put cows and calves in fields that are going to potentially have people wandering through, but the flip side is that people need to get smarter, the injured man in this one stated he saw the calves, yet still went into that field with his dog.

Basically what Argee says.  I have walked and cycled in fields with cattle – even with calves but I have a little knowledge of them.  Never had an issue apart from being charged by a bunch of bullocks – who will run away again if you shout boo at them.  Cows with calves – give them a wide berth and never get between a mother and a calf.

Its education that is needed not impossible to implement guidance

Every other business has to comply with HSAW Act.  Why should farms be exempt ? (They aren’t).

Imagine going into a shopping centre (where you don’t even have the legal right of way to be only allowed to by the owners at certain times) and you had exposed live cables and junction boxes left open or laying around for people to be electrocuted with.

You’d all think that was recklessly irresponsible.  Yet  public footpaths through fields…

Farms need to take a lot of H+S more seriously for their own good too- it would help reduce rhe number of farmers that lose limbs in machinery or even die every single year.  Even simple stuff like turning the fecken engine off before sticking a hand into a machine  for starters !

correct – they are no exempt but mitigation needs to be reasonable and practicable – and segregating a herd from all the rights of way on the land may simply not be either – as that guidance states

the other way to look at it is would a footpath thru other industrial premises be reasonable?  A farm is a working environment

Given the density of public footpaths in some areas, this could be disastrous for unlucky farms.  It is also a menace to those wanting access to rural areas.  Paths will be fenced in, just like the first path in England at Marshall Meadow or there will be increased pressure to close some.  Then it is one big extra obstacle for trying to get closer to the Scottish model or worse still, encourage push back against Scottish rights.

This is very bad news. Thank goodness I just have 200m of bridleway now. Funny thing is when I was involved in farming it,  we grazed it and it was kept  open by hungry cattle. Good luck using it in Summer now.

Its education that is needed not impossible to implement guidance

isn’t that your position on how to behave around dogs? ;-)

the scottish model is NOT unlimited access.  Its responsible access and there are duties placed on people using the land for recreation as well as on landowners.

Education for the dog owners jambo? :-)  Dog owners have a legal duty to have their dogs under control.  No such duty exists for cattle.  Its not the same.

There’s no money in most farming these days, especially if they’ve got cattle and limited grazing fields, with the removal of payment schemes after Brexit, and most normal farmers having a black hole in finances, it’s already highlighted increases in H&S failures over the last few years, with a lot of older, tired farmers, using old and tired equipment.

There is a real need to fund rights of way in the UK, the removal of payments will have a real knock on i think, farmers get funds via the basic payment scheme, which is changing soon, and reducing each year, that’s to assist in maintaining and looking after RoW’s, i can’t see them being happy to continue owning those liabilities with less and less funding in the coming years!

Given the density of public footpaths in some areas, this could be disastrous for unlucky farms.

The key words here are “where possible”.

There are cases of farmers using dangerous cattle (and signage to match) to scare people off using RoW, when they have plenty of other land they could put them on when appropriate.

Meanwhile, in the urban arena, dogs outnumber humans 4*1?

Dogs are now as ubiquitous as livestock was, back in the day (pre-industrial).

We’re living amongst this mass of ‘livestock’, but there’s no up to date legislation in place to cater to their needs.

Maybe some kind of fenced off areas for the dogs to poop (isn’t that how it’s done in New York?
Some kind of standpipe for hot days?

Rights of way across farmland come with responsibilities…keep dog on lead and…

People who fail to observe Wheaton’s Law, only have themselves to blame.

there are duties placed on people using the land for recreation as well as on landowners.

Very much this.

The hill farms around here would be knackered, given there are swathes of areas without fences. Public education should come first. 

I think it’s commonsense that bulls and cows with calves shouldn’t be in areas with public access. Cows, in my experience, just ignore humans unless they have calves. Obviously, keeping dogs on a leash is also commonsensical when there is livestock around.

A few years ago a woman walking her dog alongside the River Avon, just upstream from the old Calne railway, now Sustrans route 403, was trampled and killed by cows with calves. She held onto the dogs lead, instead of letting it go, which would have distracted the cattle leaving her unharmed. The thing is, and I’ve walked where she was walking in the past, it’s not a recognised footpath, it’s just where people in Chippenham have walked for decades. Under those circumstances, who’s to blame, if anyone?
I’ve also walked footpaths in fields with cattle and calves, and never, ever felt threatened, the cattle have seemed largely indifferent to me being there, on one occasion a cow wandered up and let me scratch her nose while she licked my fingers, while the calves were a little distance away.
The issue is always the presence of dogs, and I’ve been up by the Wansdyke where there’s been cattle with calves and seen people walking through fields, not on footpaths, with dogs just running around the cattle, unfortunately too far away to do or say anything.
In the case linked to above, that’s an arrogant landowner who thinks he has no responsibility to take appropriate steps to protect the public, but more often it’s the public who are not taking responsibility for their actions while on someone else’s property and place of work.

Farms are working environments and should be treated as such which includes recognising potential risks and behaving accordingly.
It isn’t possible to ‘design out’ all of the potential risks on a working farm.
Would you take your family for a stroll across the local scrap yard on a working day? How about a haulage yard or bus depot?
As Drac says ^^^ public education should come first.
Properly segregated footpaths along field boundaries would be a solution but I don’t see why farmers should be responsible for the cost including continuing maintenance.
A proper standard for warning signs and legally mandated installation of them would be helpful but, as above, farmers shouldn’t carry the cost.

Don’t take your bloody dig there in the first place. We have got to stop this silly self entitlement in this country. Any famer making a living and providing food, and thus reducing imports with the attached financial and environmental burden has a much bigger priority than someone want a bit of recreation.

Meanwhile, in the urban arena, dogs outnumber humans 4*1?

Dogs are now as ubiquitous as livestock was, back in the day (pre-industrial).

Is that true? Seem to be fewer dogs now than there were when I was growing up in the 80’s. Bonus being that the ones I see now are generally accompanied by a human. Back then that wasn’t always the case. We had three locally that you’d see out and about by themselves.

I don’t understand anyone that doesn’t treat any massive animal with a degree of caution. Cows are bloody huge and best given a wide berth in my opinion. Same applies to horses. Big, dumb and easily spooked isn’t the best combination.

Cows with calves shouldn’t be in a field with a RoW, and it was neglectful (at best) for the farmer to have done so, and I reckon he probs knew that given that the report says it was him that called the cows off, and he got fined for his mistake. Whatever the rights and wrongs about letting the public onto a working environment (a farm field) the right exists, and any half awake farmer knows it. Yes folks can be idiots, but the onus is rightly on the farmer, because they shouldn’t be. 

Is that true? Seem to be fewer dogs now than there were when I was growing up in the 80’s.

No the dog numbers have spiked since lockdown, I’ve seen numbers that suggest dog numbers have tripled at least. Although in this case, dog was older than that and he was a dog trainer so presumably knew what was what. 

I’ve been in places attempting to follow a footpath to find a complete lack of signage, blocked paths or locked gates and sometimes ended up in cattle enclosures – it’s no fun near the end of a long walk or run to come down off a hill on a marked and signposted trail to find you can’t get around or through a farmyard to get back to a road. Most of the time, it appears to be a deliberate act by a farmer to make access difficult.

In many upland areas in Scotland, cattle are often just roaming freely during the summer months, but the highland and other breeds are a lot more docile and can’t recall any problems even with a dog in tow.

Dog owners need to know how to deal with cattle. (In a nutshell, let the dog look after itself. Picking a small dog up also seems to work but I don’t know if this is reliable enough to recommend.)

My wife and I came across a bull on a bridleway this summer and there didn’t appear to be cows present, which I believe is illegal, but I didn’t follow up. It’s possible there were cows over the brow of the hill. Worse, there was another bull just over the river (that one definitely did have cows) and they were having an angry bellowing match. Fortunately they both wandered off after a few minutes. I wasn’t worried as I can easily outrun my wife.

(Actually we were eyeing up the wall/fence ready to jump over if necessary.)

Obviously, keeping dogs on a leash is also commonsensical when there is livestock around.

Only around sheep with lambs or in lamb. Around cattle the dog is off-lead and walking to heel or allowed to run away if the cattle get too interested. I’ll not be crossing field of pigs mind!

Cows with calves are common all over the countryside here, is it really against some code of conduct? Where are they meant to be?

[Sancotomonious vegetarian mode]

And how many cows have you killed?

[/Sanctimonious vegetarian mode]

The amount of land that the public have a legal right to walk on is a tiny % of the country.

It’s not great, but in Southern England it still feels like a footpath arround/through at least every other field. Thinking about large areas like the Thames valley with huge open fields unsuitable for crops, and footpaths allong the river, canals and tributaries, or the Chilterns which is an absolute spiders web of paths.

Anything that completely banned activities from footpaths would ammount to a defacto total ban as it possibly wouldn’t be economical to farm on the remainder.

Where are they meant to be?

In fields that don’t have a RoW through them.

Where reasonable and practicable NIckc.  Its not a legal “must” its a “should” and like all mitigations under HSA the two caveats apply

We have got to stop this silly self entitlement in this country. Any famer making a living and providing food, and thus reducing imports with the attached financial and environmental burden has a much bigger priority than someone want a bit of recreation.

But “access”, but “all land owners are the enemy of the people”, but…

Both sides need to take responsibility, clearly, which requires education on both sides, but there also needs to a sense of perspective. Knee jerk legislation to tragic, but fortunately rare, incidents is rarely a good idea. Fence off all rivers as people may drown?

Yet  public footpaths through fields…

Yet footpaths right next to roads, or even worse, roads without footpaths!

If we’re back to “one death is too many” and folk want cows & calves banned from being in fields with access, when are we banning vehicles from every road except those with no pedestrian access?

Dogscars are now as ubiquitous as livestock was, back in the day (pre-industrial).

Ftfy.

Local to me a land owner (recently bought the place) has segmented up their land and put a bull and some younger males (no cows) in the segment where the foot path goes through. Plus a load of beware of the bull signs and rerouted a foot path so the gate location is now a muddy mess.

All these things are illegal and I’ve notified the council but… Nothing.

Public education should come first.

There’s a significant portion of “the public” who can’t or won’t be educated. In fact, I reckon the cows are more intelligent than half the people walking through the fields.

How long has the countryside code been around, the “don’t light fires” and “don’t have BBQs” messages? And yet every day there are **** doing exactly that.

Ewan – bullocks or bull calves ie do they still have their knackers?  Bullocks are not dangerous at all – just stupid bored and inquisitive.  they usually have their knackers removed when pretty young