Hello, it's Anthony Chadwick from the Webinar Vet welcoming you to another episode of Vet Chat. Very, very pleased to have Alex Briault with me today. Alex is a fellow eco-warrior. We've met through our shared love and passion for the environment and for all things one health and one welfare. And Alex is a veterinary surgeon. Based up in Blackpool but also went to the same university, so Liverpool, so we share that as well and Alex, it's great to have you on. Thank you very much. Yeah, great, great to see you and to be able to have a chat. Be great to sort of introduce yourself to the listeners, fascinating, how people develop and how they, Become, I suppose, the some of their experiences and of course, as well as being a veterinary surgeon, you spent a long time in your youth, in Zambia, which I would imagine must have helped you to develop your love for the natural world as well. Yes, I was, I was very lucky. We moved around a lot as a child. I, I, went first went to Zambia when I was, about 2. My father was a vet and he'd decided following, seeing things on the news, the Biafran crisis and seeing pictures of people having, serious problems with starvation and warfare, he decided he wanted to go and contribute in such a way as he could with his veterinary skills. I nearly went, nearly ended up in Nepal, but, anyway, we ended up in, Zambia, and he worked there in the Natural Resources Development College. And so he was basically teaching people about, livestock management, animal husbandry really. But also we, he, he made full, took, took full advantage of the opportunities in terms of seeing the wildlife and of course in the, in the 1960s, you know, Zambia was a very sparsely populated country with enormous, wildlife reserves and we regularly used to go off into the bush and have have very exciting experiences. My, my father was someone for whom, health and safety wasn't really, concept that he was very familiar with. So, we came back to Chelmsford for a brief while, and then we went back out to Zambia. We finally left in 1979 because of the. Political crisis along the border with Mozambique, but those, those were sort of those probably help to sort of fix in my mind ideas about concepts around poverty as well as the you know, the beauty of nature and the the excitement of, of, of wild nature. And then I, I, I suppose from, you know, driving around the countryside in Land Rover in. In Zambia, I decided that this was the job for me, so I tried very hard at school and managed to get into Liverpool University. Before I got into before I started at Liverpool, I worked on, a youth opportunities programme at a, a farm in, Goosner which long before, well, it was still actually when I was there it was, a farm for occupational therapy for patients with . To their mental health problems. So that was very interesting in terms of gaining a wide range of experience working with cattle, sheep and pigs, but also working with people with a very different approach to life, if you like, from ones I'd come across up until then. And again, I think, I think that was, that helped to sort of . I think it helps to keep your humility, on track if you, if you see people who are perhaps having a much worse time than you are, and it makes you grateful for all the, the, you know, it makes you grateful for how lucky you are. Yeah. It's interesting, Alex, talking about that because of course, Lancashire Wildlife Trust has done quite a lot of work showing that putting people into a natural environment. Volunteering, etc. Social prescribing, you know, doctors actually saying your prescription is to go and work in nature for a few hours, a lot of their work at Lancashire Wildlife Trust shows that, You get, you know, for every 1 pound you put into that, you get 7 pounds value back. Visits to the doctors, people coming off their antidepressants, but yeah, that was something that was going on in the 70s and 80s, and we can, we can forget about some of those things that were already happening. Even the, the, the, the tragedy of that and you know, we'll be talking about money later. The tragedy of that is that place was shut down in the mid 80s, a year or two after I'd left there. And all those people, all those people who were, You know, getting residential care at Whittingham Hospital. They were just released into the community, you know, you can, you can probably remember that Guardian, cartoon strip, Claire and the Community. Well, that, that name Claire and the Community is based on the concept care in the community. And it was horrendous because there were people there who, within the confines of the hospital, you know, that, you know, they were very poorly people, but they had a community and they had people looking after them, and they, you know, they were able to engage in doing some work. And they were just all abandoned, and it was because of money, it was because of the cost of running that place. And obviously we'll be talking later about how we use money to make decisions and, and whether it's always we end up with the best result in terms of welfare. And in a short term basis it might save money, but often in the longer term. You know, people who end up going in and out of hospital and things, the cost of all that, it's sometimes that we're not looking at the bigger picture. I think this is often the case. With environmental issues, I, I, I read a book by Mark Carney called Values, and he was talking about the fact that, you know, we weren't prepared for the financial crisis in 2008, we weren't really prepared for COVID in 2020. Saved money by not preparing, but we lost a lot of money because we weren't prepared for COVID, you know, we spent 39 billion on a test and trace system that in my view, never really worked. Obviously it made some people very rich. But it wasn't for the benefit of the community in the end, and this is the problem with planning sometimes sounds boring, and putting money in. I mean, even the foot and mouth disease crisis, you know, that was partly because we've been closing veterinary investigation centres, wasn't it? So you're right, it, it's sometimes short term, which is often a lot of people's thinking. It might be cheaper, but in the long term it usually ends up being a huge amount more expensive, so no, it's a, it's a good point. I was very fortunate in in 2005 to take a sabbatical and I spent some time in, East Africa, Zambia as well, so I went to South Luangwa and country, but of course, as you say, there is also the poverty element as well, isn't there? So in in any sort of situation you're trying to. Look after nature, it's also important to look after people, to look after the animals that inhabit that natural environment, whether they be wild or domesticated as well. So it's getting the balance right. Getting the balance right, so I think we have, when we're thinking about money, we have to think in terms of laws of diminishing returns. So we, we can see, as we've just said, that, you know, you can have people who, who, because of the economic situation in their country or maybe because of their personal health issues that that they may be in poverty. And we know that, you know, generally, if you've got more money, your welfare is going to be better to a degree, but There's been studies that show that once, once people achieve a certain level of wealth, you know, doubling the wealth from there doesn't actually generally make much difference to how happy they feel or, or to their welfare in any, any sort of practical sense. But if you, if you take a graph of the human economy, and compare it with the amount of money in the world, I mean, that's just expanded exponentially over the last several 100 years. But if you look at, you know, of welfare, whether you look at things like life expectancy in America, or if you're looking at things like, quality adjusted life years, you know, those numbers aren't expanding exponentially. So there's a lot of diminishing returns with, with using money for decision making to a certain extent, to start with, when you're, when you're in poverty, then having more money makes more sense. But once you're, you know, middle class, if you like. There comes a point where having twice as much money as you've got now probably isn't gonna make that much difference to you, but it will have an impact on, on the, on all the other things that you know. So if I, if I'm want to fly on holiday once a year, you know, because I'm, I'm wealthy enough to afford that, that'll have a certain amount of benefit to me and it will have a certain amount of impact on the climate. But if I'm flying abroad twice a month, you know, I know people that have houses in Spain and they'll fly down there for a weekend. Is it really massively improving my quality of life? It's definitely having a massive impact on the, on the climate, but, but you know, there, there's a a lot of diminishing returns, so when we're thinking about money, we, we, we can't think that more is always better. Yeah, and I think again talking about Mark Carney's book Inequality, if, if inequality grows within the community, so there's some very, very rich people and some very, very poor people, and we see that, I think in the figure I saw recently, 30% of children in the UK are, you know, in a poverty situation, precarious situation. Actually, it, it also affects the growth of the economy, so if, The way that we Running economy seems to be unfair, then that economy doesn't grow as much as an economy that's based on more fair systems and, you know, as you were saying, happiness doesn't grow exponentially with the amount of money in your bank. In fact, some would say that as you get richer and richer, you know, beyond a certain point you become potentially more and more unhappy, more likely to have drug addictions, etc. Etc. I, I, I, and another way I think, that, that, that's a good point, Antony, and, and I think another way of looking at it is, you know, why should it be, you know, the, the, the, you know, in liberal countries across the world, why should it be that the more money you have, the more damage you're permitted to cause to the environment, because that, that is the de facto situation, you know, if, if I can afford to fly to Spain. Twice a month, then that's not against the law. I'm perfectly entitled to do that. I can, I can plant a couple of trees, I can offset it. You know, but it, but it's, we know that these, you know, flights is an obvious example, but we know that all of these things that we're doing are, are causing problems, and these are compounding problems. They're getting worse and worse, you know, they're, they're, they're accelerating and, you know, we, we, we, we don't want to go into all the details about all the, the situation in the permafrost and the . The, the, the lots of Arctic ice and all these things, but, these things are self-reinforcing, and that's why it's an emergency and that's why, although, you know, we might think, well, the weather's a bit milder than usual and a bit damper than usual, it doesn't really seem like a terribly frightening thing, but I think, you know, we only need to look to Valencia last month. You know, these things, these things are going to become more frequent and they're gonna become more problematic. And the worst, you know, well, not the worst thing about it, but I, I, I, I, this is where vet work comes in, you know, thinking about these things in terms of justice, you know, where is the justice in this, the, the, the people who haven't got a voice, whether it's poor people or whether it's animals, you know, obviously as vets we're concerned with animal welfare. These animals haven't got any, you know, we're their advocates, they haven't got their own voice. We have to speak up for them. So if we're doing things which are, impacting their welfare, we have to say, you know, let's stop doing this, let's find a different way. What, what was our original goal? Why are we doing this? You know, why do I have a car? What, why do I want to get from A to B? If I'm living in a city, my son lives in London, he doesn't have a car, he doesn't need a car if you live in the countryside, unless you've got an excellent public transport service. You're really gonna struggle without a car, and if you're a farmer, you know, fair enough, a farmer probably has to have a car, you know, there, there wouldn't be any sort of rational alternative to that. But for a lot of people who live in the countryside who aren't farmers. The only reason they have a car, unless they're particularly enthusiastic about, you know, car design or something, the only reason they have a car is because they haven't got any alternative, and it's it, yeah, as far as the, the climate and the population is concerned, private car ownership is far past its sell by date. Yeah, I think more to sharing and so on, which we're seeing with things like Uber, is it cheaper to use Uber when you need it than a car and. You mentioned about vet work there, obviously not everybody will know what vet work is, so perhaps you can explain, I know you're a trustee of VetWork, obviously doing some really great work, but perhaps explain a little bit about it for the listeners. Yeah, so, that work was a a charitable organisation set up by, Stephen Blakeway and, Sarah Morgan, back in the, Late 80s or early 90s, I forgot, forget the date exactly. I've, I've known Stephen for a very long time, and he, with the, with the work that he was doing was basically, outreach to, agriculturalists in marginal communities, usually agricultural. Working with people to teach them about animal husbandry and how, looking after the, the health and welfare of their animals, typically these are draught animals like ponies and camels and things, . Showing how, if you look after the health and welfare of your animals, they will be more productive, they will live longer, they will be stronger, so every, everybody benefits. So it's the idea is connecting, animal welfare, the environment, and, the, the human welfare, and, . Worked in all sorts of places in some of the most frightening places in the world Afghanistan, Somalia, Kenya, Tanzania, Egypt, Mexico, and Sarah as well has has worked in a variety of places around the world. He, he, he's not as active overseas as he was now, and the reason he invited me to come along and join, he, he knows that since since the early 90s, I've been very interested in, in human ecology and the environmental crisis. And so we, we, the, the, the organisation has sort of like somewhat redirected in the sense of moving towards more outreach within the UK to explore and expose the ideas around one welfare and and one health. We did a carbon literacy, . Course for the British Veterinary Association in December 22, 2022, so two years ago now. Which was quite intimidating thing to do because I had a lot of people there who were, you know, high ups from the veterinary profession, who very kindly agreed to come along and listen to us mansplaining, the environmental crisis. But it was really good, you know, we, we weren't claiming to have all the answers or to, to, to know all the. Fact, but, it was, it was basically targeted at, if there are any areas of carbon emissions and climate change that they didn't understand, to sort of bring them up to speed and give them access to, information resources, and then to get them to, come up with something that they could practically do within their own. Work to, to reduce their emissions. So for example, we had, Julia Shrub looking at radically changing the way that the horse practise that she runs uses their vehicles. So, using, software to manage the, the trips that the vets were doing, on, on their, in their daily work. Yeah, so we were fortunate to have, Sue Patterson attended the event and she, as part of her, sitting on the board of a large organisation involved in the manufacture of, liquids, veterinary products, she persuaded them to, change the, all the, all the bottling that they were using to, recycling. And we sort of thought, well, it, it sounds a bit. Sort of, you know, it doesn't sound all that impressive until you realise that they were using 60 million bottles a year around the world. So, it was actually quite a massive impact on the carbon emissions for the, for the company and the plastic pollution and circular economy, exactly, and, and you know, this, this is it. These things are all interconnected and that's why it's so important to think about them in the round. I think there's a danger, Alex, of . You know, I see this a lot, the, the siloing of, we saw a COP 29, everybody's talking about carbon, then a COP, I think it was 16, everybody's talking about biodiversity, we had the plastics conference where the where there wasn't any agreement to create a treaty around plastic. These are all The same problem from a slightly different angle, and if we just look at carbon and say, well, we'll plant loads of trees, but we plant sitka spruce up in Scotland, which we know are sterile, you know, that no bird will go in there, so to speak. We have to look at this in a much more holistic way and, you know, your efforts and Sue's efforts there are just one thing, little things matter. I think sometimes with the, and I don't talk about the climate crisis, talk about the environmental crisis. We can, we can think that what can we do as individuals, but actually even if we're just taking small actions, if we all took small actions. It adds up to a lot, obviously 60 million bottles is is massive action. But I, I, I think this is where as a veterinary profession, we shouldn't . Be afraid to do those small things and to shout about them because the more that we do, the smaller the problem becomes, doesn't it? That that's, that's exactly right. And you know, we, we sort of say, you know, people say they're frustrated and you say, you know, you know, what can I do? Said 8 billion individual people. Well, that brings me to something which is close to my heart, which is the idea of how we use money, because when, when you say we all do individual things, obviously one thing that we all do all the time is use money. We use money every day, and money is an incredibly powerful tool. If you want to sort of engage the wisdom of crowds, and I mean, this is, this is what Adam Smith and, Hayek and people are talking about that, that, that, you know, the, the best people to make decisions about how they manage their resources are individual people and to a degree that, that is true. But the, the problem is that although the, the, the money value of, of, an object or a service. Conveys some information about it, it doesn't convey everything and one of the most important things that it doesn't convey is how much energy is involved in that transaction. And although this might not be a very popular point of view. We've been phenomenally lucky in having fossil fuels. We had the guy at the COP 16 recently saying what a blessing from God, fossil fuels were. Well, you know, if, if you, I want modern dentistry. I, I can't see how we could have got to modern dentistry in the 20th century without using fossil fuels in the, in the 18th and 19th century. You know, that was a massive boost to the, to the world economy, whichever way you, you crack it. But the problem is that, and again, we come back to this concept of diminishing returns. We, we've had this huge extra boost into the, in terms of energy in the human economy, which has had lots of benefits, but it's also had lots of negative externalities. It's had lots of disbenefits, things that we didn't intend to happen, but which have happened and which now we need to clean the mess up. And the fact is that money doesn't really. Take account of those problems. Now we've recently had the Natural England State of Natural Capital report was published last month, and, Helen Donald, who is, a friend of mine who's the head of, Natural England, the the veterinary chief there, she, I, I, I've, I've read the report, it's very interesting and it's, it's, it's all about. Taking account in, in the national, within the national economy in one way or another, of the value of natural assets. So you might think of those as ecosystem services. Whether it's providing fresh air or water or timber, and, you know, cult cultural benefits. And it's about registering that those things have value and getting organisations which have an impact on those things to, to take that value into account and to use that in their sums. And it's so it's, it's a very interesting document, it's well worth reading, it's freely available on the Natural England website. Helen was . Helen was actually at our Ere discussion forum for the last 2 years as well, so, so I met her on both occasions. So I mean that that that was, you know, obviously the, the, the Samsbury event on the, the floating platform in Brockholes, was, was a fantastic event, you know. Just in terms of the, the, being in a wildlife reserve, which is right in the middle of a bustling city, surprisingly, I hadn't actually been there before, so, that was a real surprise to me. And, and to, to meet a, a, a range of people involved in, promoting veterinary sustainability, . That, that, that was really exciting and as I say, I met Helen Donald there so I was very grateful for that because this is how hopefully these ideas become, you know, you have a snowball effect where you, you discuss ideas with people, you. You, you, you enhance and refine your own ideas about things and you get to see things. What was the name of the man who was, collecting, semen from, shrewdles and extraordinary. So he, he was the one that was talking about the concept of a sort of dip in terms of biodiversity that we're, we're currently undergoing a dip. But if we can manage and mitigate and reverse some of the worst impacts of the sustainability emergency, you know, when we come out of the On the other side, we're gonna have a, a bank of genetic material to help to, you know, recover some of the biodiversity that we're worried that we're losing at the moment. So yes, so, so, yeah, so the, the, the, the, but the point that Helen Donald makes is that. Natural England hasn't got any money and in fact, you know, it's funded through the APHA, the Animal and Plant Health Authority, the government departments, and their budget is going to be tightly squeezed, and Natural England is going to be one of the departments that is being squeezed. And so although that report is very useful and it's well worth looking at, and I'd recommend any anyone involved in policymaking, particularly. To, to, to look at it and consider it. Helen says that really natural England's focus at the moment, any any resources that they do have will be focused on the water aspects, in other words, the fresh water crisis that we have in this country. And a lot, a lot of those other things in that report, you sort of think, well, who is Actually going to be taking this information on board and doing the things that they are, talking about, you know, natural capital financial disclosure, and there's a, there's, a project trying to encourage organisations and businesses and companies to, Take natural capital into account in in the way that they create their accounts. Alex, we've had the biodiversity net gain which the previous government brought in, so any developments obviously they have to actually improve biodiversity actually in that area or in a local area. So, I think there are some good things going on, but I think, you know, you're right, I, I place government probably bottom of the list of people who will make a difference. In the environmental crisis and, you know, business and individuals are place actually higher. Obviously government can do things, but they move very slowly and we don't have that time and just for those who are listening who perhaps wondering what we're talking about with the veterinary green discussion forum, I set up in 2022, an annual event at a nature reserve where we go as a group of vets and people within the industry. To talk about these issues because I really believe that as vets we should be part of the solution rather than part of the problem. So we've talked about ectoparasiticide use, we've talked about some of the rewarding issues. We actually played a game, in London, called the STG game and actually, would the world be a better place if the vets were running it, and what was interesting was, and I think it comes to your point, Alex, that if you remember the game, By 2026, we were all very good at making money, but actually socially and environmentally the world was struggling. I think then everybody suddenly realised that they had to be philanthropists, and by the end we had a much more balanced picture and I think the world was in a better place, but you know I agree with you, it, we can't just look at, Money as being the only marker, the only thing that we measure, and I think the natural capital does bring it in, the fact that when we have a business, we almost certainly do affect the natural world. How can we balance that up, you know, our actions. So webinar vet, every time somebody joins as a member, we plant two trees and they're in in 7 developing countries. Not so much for the carbon, but more for the shelter that they create for people and livestock and animals, but also to hopefully help increase biodiversity as well. So we all I think have a an obligation that. When we live on the planet, we obviously do have an impact on the environment, but that can be positive as well as negative, and if we think about it, it's more likely to be. More positive than more negative, isn't it? Although, you know, as you said, we've won the postcode lottery, we, we're probably in the top 2% most fortunate people in the world, growing up, you know, being educated, living in the UK, creating probably much more carbon than somebody in Zambia does, and yet, Zambians will often feel that . Global warming crisis with flood, yeah, they've been having a bad drought there this, this, this back end of this year. They've had a, they've had a lot of trouble with drought, so, a lot of the crops have been badly affected by that. So, so exactly. So the, so the least deserving, or rather the most deserving of, of help and assistance are the ones that are having the worst problems. Yeah. I, I think that the the the game in in London this year, at the Wetlands Centre, which again was a fantastic place to go to, and, we, we were hoping to see the, the, the otters when we went for a little walk in the afternoon, but unfortunately they were having a snooze, so we didn't get to see them, but, another wonderful place. And I think one thing I'd like to say about the Veterinary Green discussion forum is the, the wonderful atmosphere that you managed to create there. So. You, you've got a lot of people. I mean, I suppose to a certain extent they're a self-selecting group of people who are all interested in the same thing, but, I, I think the atmosphere that you create is, it's very supportive and it doesn't feel rushed and, you know, we got through an amazing amount of stuff in fact, but there's plenty of time for discussion and it's, it's, you know, I, I go to the . Things like the, the London Vet Show and the BSADA, conferences. Obviously there's a lot of companies there trying to, get you to look at their products and services, which is fair enough. I mean, they're, they're, they're supporting the industry and they're, they're, they're providing the things that we use on a day to day basis. But, it was lovely to go to a, a, a meeting where you could just really focus on the concepts and, you know, Knock a chew about ideas with with people who, who have very different approaches to to to dealing with problems we have obviously, her, the the sewage recycling guy who was Sort of negotiating deals with people all over the world in the background whilst we were carrying on with the conference, which was quite, quite entertaining. I I think it's really nice that you said that, Alex, because also I remember speaking to Andy Torrance and he said there's a danger that when we're doing this sort of work, when we care about the environment, we think we're the only ones, whereas actually when you bring people together as a group. There's a power in people getting to know each other, developing relationships, and, and both learning but teaching as well, so it's an environment where we listen as well as as speak. I, I think it's good to be able to, you know, especially in the sort of question and answer sessions, you know, you might have a bit of a rocky idea. And you know, rather than going out in the sort of into the wild to to announce it, you can sort of test run it with, with. People who, who, you know, are not going to sort of, you know, they might, they might disagree with you, but they're not going to shoot you down in flames in a particularly unpleasant way. So that, that's another, another aspect of the, of the forum which is, which is very enjoyable and and interesting, yeah. Well, Alex, you know, really appreciate your time. I know how busy you are. It's always good to talk about a, a number of issues, but particularly the environmental issues that we're going through at the moment. For those who are listening and interested, next year, June 11th to 2013, we're actually hopefully travelling mainly by train and stuff down to the south of France because we want to take this veterinary discussion forum into Europe and being very, very supported by Royal Canon. To do it quite close to the headquarters in AA, so we will be going quite close to the Camar, which is obviously an area of natural beauty, but also an area that potentially will struggle as the environment crisis unfolds with things like flooding and disappearing as, as, sea levels increase. So there's a real interest in how do we preserve these massive areas, also seeing er wetlands as an opportunity to mitigate against flooding by taking the water there rather than going into houses. So it seems a great area in which to hold this meeting, and those of you who are listening and are interested, please do get in touch with me, Anthony at the webinar vet.com. And we can, we can see if you want to get involved as an individual, or indeed as a company, a veterinary association. I think my, one of my goals is that the veterinary industry is seen as a force for good in the world. Rather than one that's causing problems. So, those of you who are interested, please do get in touch. Hopefully, Alex, we will get you down there because you've contributed so much to the last two, of the veterinary green discussion forum, so we will see what happens over the next few months as well. But thank you so much for agreeing to talk on vet chat today. Thank you very much, Antony. It's been a privilege and a pleasure. Thank you and thanks everyone for listening and hopefully see you on a podcast or a webinar very soon. I