“Running a successful business is about doing the right thing and giving back,” says worthy winner.
David Booth, co-founder of Westgate Labs, is the 2024 winner of the British Equestrian Trade Association (BETA) Lifetime Achievement award.
David and his wife Gillian established their business specialising in postal worm egg testing of equine faecal samples 25 years ago.
Today, the Northumberland based company has 15 members of staff while David and Gillian remain very much involved as non-executive directors. In 2015, their daughter Claire Shand joined Westgate Labs as marketing director.
David was presented with his BETA Lifetime Achievement award by the trade association’s President, Jane Holderness-Roddam, during Sunday’s BETA Gala Dinner.
Before David was greeted by a standing ovation, dinner guests heard the following account of his remarkable career.
Finding a better way…
David Booth developed the business idea for postal worm egg counts for horses in the late 1990s, at a time when regular chemical worming was the accepted way of doing things.
Living in rural Northumberland, he was aware of the wormer resistance problems in sheep and was questioning the way we were treating our own horses with regular chemicals. However, when worm egg counts sent through the vet took more than three weeks to return results and there was no clear way to interpret them, he thought there must be a better way.
David used his lab experience to research the Modified MacMaster technique methodology and begun to conduct the tests himself. Not seeing many worm eggs in our own horses, he took random samples out at shows and was shocked to find counts of many thousands in these horses.
The findings both affirming the test technique and that the wider horse population had problems with parasites.
Creating a market
This experience sparked his interest and he set out to develop a business model that would help to improve the parasite control for horses in the UK.
Westgate Labs was launched in 1999 with David’s wife, Gillian, as co-founding director. At every step of the way, the objective was to create a service that was as easy as possible for the horse owner to use; simple collection kits with postage paid return, rapid results backed up by best practice advice.
The challenge was not only promoting the service but also the concept; educating horse owners to a new way of approaching parasite control and changing behaviour around a complex subject – no mean feat especially over a grizzly subject matter!
In doing so, David created the market for commercial worm egg count companies.
He completed his SQP qualification to enable him to advise customers on their results. Westgate Labs remains the only worm egg count service provider with a free telephone helpline staffed by qualified advisors.
Pan industry group
It was not until 2009, ten years after David started his business, that the British Equine Veterinary Association (BEVA) began to promote targeted worm control with a modest campaign.
In 2021, Westgate Labs became an instrumental part in the founding and launching of the CANTER initiative (Controlling ANTiparasitic resistance in Equines Responsibly), a new pan industry group set up to tackle wormer resistance in horses.
In 2005, the company launched its first retail kits to incentivise shop based SQPs to profit from best practice.
“The bean counter”
Now in his 70s and affectionately known as the bean counter, David insists that part of running a successful business is the responsibility to do the right thing and give back.
Through 2019, he undertook a comprehensive review of packaging to help minimise waste and eliminate unnecessary plastic, launching compostable packaging for retail packs and upgrading packaging for the direct lab services to reusable and compostable envelopes, reducing waste to landfill by around 75%.
Wildlife haven
In 2018, David purchased 130 acres of restored open cast land that he is rewilding to create a space for nature and carbon sequestration.
The space is becoming a haven for wildlife as well as being enjoyed by staff who walk and ride over the nature reserve at lunchtimes and after work.
As 2024 is David’s 70th birthday year, we really feel it is an apt time to recognise the significant contribution he has made to this oft underappreciated area of horse health and the wider equine industry.
His foresight, bravery and the ingenuity to champion this cause has undoubtedly slowed the rise of resistance and paved the way for the equine community to avert the potential disaster of wormer resistance.
Wheelbarrow image by M W from Pixabay
