I visited the Farm Families Health Check caravan at my local Fane Valley store a few weeks ago. The health check involves more than just weight and body mass index, it includes blood pressure, cholesterol, diabetic risk score and mental wellbeing.

I consider myself a fairly typical farmer, so I would imagine several salient points that were raised are applicable to many farming people of my age. For me, the most interesting part of the check was the mental wellbeing section, since I think the link between mental and physical health is inseparable for many farmers.

Diet

When the nurse asked me about my diet, and whether or not I ate healthily, I said that it depended on the amount of pressure I felt under. For example, when I was under enormous workload stress, junk food was required as some sort of comfort. Whereas at times of stress-free farming (ie just after the Single Farm Payment has landed into the bank account), I could resort to a high-fibre, low-fat, zero-sugar regime.

The advice from the nurse was that instead of eating rubbish at stressful times, I should go for a walk. I pointed out that this would only exacerbate the problem, since the time spent walking could have been used to get a lot more work completed. She then recommended that I delegate some of my work, but I replied that mine was a one-man band and therefore delegation was pretty-much impossible. She has probably heard these excuses many times.

I asked how you knew when stress and anxiety was reaching dangerous levels, and whether waking at 3 am, feeling like the whole world was on your shoulders might be a sign that I was in need of a long holiday. However, she maintained this symptom was something a lot of people experience on a regular basis.

Good and bad

For me, one of the hardest parts of the health check was the list of good and bad foods. To put it in a nutshell (pun intended), anything you enjoy eating seems to be bad for you and the better any food is for your body, the less you will enjoy eating it. So instead of munching your way through some delicious high-sugar breakfast cereal every morning, your wife will bring home something that resembles bruised barley with toenail clippings sprinkled over it.

I came out of the caravan with a pile of leaflets. I have been reading them in detail since and whether or not I choose to implement the recommendations is irrelevant. The point is that many farmers, especially those with financial problems, have been given the opportunity to address any part of their life that is not functioning correctly.

This is done confidentially, with contact numbers, addresses and brief recommendations. The Farm Families Health Check cannot put any money into our pockets, but it can help us to deal with many aspects of pressure caused by modern agriculture. If you see the caravan some day at the mart or your local store, it is worth a visit.Experience

I spoke to a few farming acquaintances about my experience afterwards, wondering how they viewed this opportunity to find out a bit about the health status of their lives.

The irony would seem to be that the smokers, the fry addicts and the overweight folk already know they should be altering some of their habits. The old adage remains as true as ever – you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.

From 3 November, revised brucellosis pre-movement testing controls will take effect in NI, which means that the age threshold for pre-movement testing of breeding stock will increase from 12 to 24 months.

Where an animal is tested, the window for a single movement will also be extended from 30 to 60 days.

The changes only apply to internal cattle movements in NI. The current arrangements will remain in place for breeding animals exported to Britain and other EU member states.

Relaxation of brucellosis controls in NI is in response to the low prevalence of the disease. The last confirmed case was in February 2012, and assuming NI remains disease-free, an application can be made for officially brucellosis free status in March 2015.

Benefit

Commenting on the current disease situation, Agriculture Minister Michelle O’Neill said: “Achieving disease-free status will greatly benefit all cattle farmers here as we will be able to implement progressive reduction of control measures, such as routine testing and further relax pre-movement testing. Until that time, apart from pre-movement testing, all breeding cattle over one-year-old should continue to be presented for brucellosis tests.”