Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether her Department has undertaken planning exercises in the last 10 years to test the UK's preparedness for managing a farm animal disease outbreak.

There have been four UK-wide exercises involving Defra, the Scottish Government, the Welsh Government, the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs, and the Animal and Plant Health Agency including their operational partners and stakeholder organisations:

• Exercise Holly (July 2021) tested government’s response to an outbreak of African swine fever.
• Exercise Blackthorn (November 2017 to July 2018) tested the response to a major outbreak of foot and mouth disease (FMD).
• Exercise Willow (2016) examined the UK’s capacity to respond to a large cross-border outbreak of FMD.
• Exercise Walnut (2013) tested the response to an outbreak of classical swine fever.

We have also completed numerous operational, field and laboratory-based exercises to test and refine contingency plans on a yearly cycle, and our response capability has been tested by real-world outbreaks such as the ongoing outbreak of avian influenza.