Tributes to Gavin

Mary-Lou Penrith

Having worked closely with Gavin for just over 25 years, there are so many memories that selection one of them is difficult. My first introduction to Gavin did not augur well, as the person introducing me explained that I was a final year veterinary student who had previously been a researcher, and he looked my 48-year-old person up and down with an expression of extreme disapprobation and said ‘’You must be mad!” I am not sure that he ever really changed his mind on that, but after I joined the pathology section at OVI after graduating and developed an interest in pig diseases, and Gavin was looking for someone who could take on some of his increasing load of consulting for FAO on African swine fever, he found himself landed with me. I accompanied him on a 2-week consultancy in Mozambique, during which we became firm friends because we could both see the funny side of some of the frustrations that we experienced.

The fact that I could speak Portuguese proved useful, and on one memorable occasion reassuring. We had visited a farm in the morning where African swine fever was suspected, and although the farmer was absent we took the liberty of taking a dead piglet to the laboratory in Maputo to confirm the diagnosis. Towards the end of the afternoon we stopped off at the farm again and were told that the farmer was there. We waited and in due course someone said he was coming and a truly fearsome figue appeared from a banana plantation. He was a robust Portuguese gentleman with a wild mop of grey hair, about three days’ stubble on his very red face, wearing only a pair of trousers rolled up to his knees and held up by a piece of string, and carrying the biggest machete you could imagine. He was waving it around as he shouted at us in Portuguese. After a few moments of this Gavin edged up behind me and muttered in my ear ‘’What’s going on?” with his eyes wide with alarm. I was fortunately able to reassure him that the farmer was only expressing his indignation at this horrible disease that was killing his pigs, and not his fury at the theft of the piglet, and the machete was only being used for punctuation. 

After we both left the OVI, Gavin to work for FAO in Nairobi and I, a little over a year later, to spend four years in Maputo as laboratory management advisor, we kept in touch and when we were both back in South Africa in 2006 joined forces in a consulting company. Through the company and in particular working with Steve Osofsky, we collaborated mainly in projects to pilot the implementation of Gavin’s greatest legacy, the concept of commodity-based trade, to end the exclusion of cattle farmers living in foot and mouth disease infected zones from high value markets by ensuring that their beef was free of foot and mouth disease through a process of risk mitigation. It was enjoyable work, with much travel to the Zambezi Region of Namibia and Ngamiland in Botswana, meeting with farmers and vets, holding workshops and visiting quarantine stations and abattoirs (not really my favourite thing but half the time they were not working due to foot and mouth disease restrictions), as well as border posts. It is my greatest hope that this legacy will continue and that Gavin will be remembered not only for his amazing knowledge and understanding of foot and mouth disease but also by making a difference in the fields of equitable market access as well as better integration of livestock production and wildlife conservation.

May his memory live forever.