Suicide verdict for farmer in tag swap case

An award-winning dairy farmer under investigation by Trading Standards committed suicide by using his loader machine to crush himself against a wall.

John Round, 44, deliberately by-passed the safety cut-out on the heavy piece of farm machinery on the farm at Elmore Back, near Gloucester, the coroner’s inquest was told.

For some months before his death on 19 April this year, he had been increasingly worried about an investigation by Trading Standards officers into TB-affected cattle that he had sent for slaughter.

The day before his death he had been notified that the main customer for his farm’s milk would no longer take supplies from him because of the cattle investigation.

On the morning that he died, he was very stressed, and asked his wife Sophie for the keys to the gun cabinet, which she refused to give him.

Mr Round’s family had farmed the land at Elmore for three generations, the inquest at the Seasons Conference Centre in Cheltenham was told.

Gloucestershire deputy coroner David Dooley found that there was a high enough level of evidence to show that Mr Round had taken his own life.

Mrs Round told the coroner that although her husband coped well around the farm during the day, the worry and stress over the Trading Standards investigation meant he was not sleeping.

“He was up at 5.15am and went out to start feeding the cows as usual. I saw him at 6.45am and we had a cup of coffee together.

“He said: ‘This is just hideous. Give me the keys to the (gun) cabinet’. Obviously, I would not do so.

“If I had thought his comment was made seriously, I would have stayed with him. I cannot believe he meant to harm himself.”

Mr Round was found in the farm’s silage pit a short time later, crushed against the side wall by a Manitou loader.

Tractor driver Tom Miles found him when he arrived for work and saw that the loader’s engine was still running and its wheels were still turning.

“It has a safety device which means it will not move unless someone is sitting in the seat. I saw that a large bag of feed had been placed on the seat to by-pass it,” he said.

Former Trading Standards officer Nigel Durnford told the inquest the investigation had been about TB reactor cattle that had been sent for slaughter.

He said it was believed that the cattle sent for slaughter were not the same ones that had tested positive at the farm, and that their ear tags and cattle passports had been changed.

DNA samples showed that none of the five cattle in question were related to their listed offspring or their dams, he said.

In a statement made three weeks before his death, Mr Round said there had been a large turnover of staff on the farm and some workers were not familiar with all the animal control systems.

He said that cattle ear tags were changed when they got damaged, and some may have been given the wrong tags, but he was satisfied all the correct cattle had been sent for slaughter.

A police investigation found that Mr Round had his face to the wall when he was trapped, but was “in a position where he would never normally have reason to be”.