My friend Peter Jinman, who has died aged 72 of cancer, was a greatly loved rural vet in Herefordshire whose impact and influence reached Westminster and the BBC.
Directed as a teenager to veterinary medicine by the zoologist JZ Young, who was a family acquaintance, Peter had a distinguished career that led him to become president both of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons (2010-11) and the British Veterinary Association (2002-03). He was appointed OBE in 2004.
Despite reaching the heights of his profession, Peter remained a vet with mud on his boots, as comfortable testing cattle for TB as advising government on animal welfare policy. During the 2001 foot-and-mouth disease epidemic he averted disaster when marksmen were deployed up both sides of the same hill simultaneously to cull infected sheep.
From 2003 to 2006 he was a member of the BBC’s rural affairs advisory committee, ensuring veterinary matters were presented accurately across the network and advising on various animal-related elements of Archers storylines. He was also the veterinary adviser to the second series of the BBC Three series Kill It, Cook It, Eat It.
Outside veterinary business, Peter was elected as an independent councillor to Herefordshire county council in 2017. During the Covid-19 pandemic, and drawing on his understanding of population medicine and epidemiology, Peter gave guidance on the risks of discharging potentially infectious patients into care homes. At his suggestion, provision of additional training and PPE helped to reduce the county’s death rate.
In 2011, with his daughter Phillippa, he bought, renovated and breathed life into his village pub, the Temple Bar, in Ewyas Harold, Herefordshire, donning rubber gloves to wash up after Sunday lunch service.
Peter was born in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, to Charles Jinman, a design engineer, and Floss (nee Windridge), one of the UK’s first county court clerks. He attended Feldon school in Leamington Spa, then Warwick school, and graduated in veterinary medicine from the Royal Veterinary College, London, in 1974. Two years later he joined the Ewyas Harold practice, marrying the boss’s daughter, Gill Carter, in 1977, and becoming a partner in 1979.
His eclectic interests led to adventure holidays that included sailing in the Caribbean, hiking up volcanoes in Hawaii and canoeing on the Colorado river. His son, Henry, recalls a trip to Croatia, where they unknowingly negotiated a minefield before sitting down to lunch. He was a liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Farmers and a freeman of the City of London.
Peter is survived by Gill, their children, Charlotte, Phillippa and Henry, and grandchildren, Harry, Lucy and Edward.
