Agriculture: Farm Animal Disease

Lord Plumb Excerpts

Tuesday 6th July 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, the noble Lord and I are both old enough to remember the 2001 outbreak. I can just about remember the 1967 outbreak—I was in short trousers—and other Members of this House who are older than me might also remember it. The noble Lord will also remember that there was a good report from, I think, the Duke of Northumberland into that outbreak from which lessons could have been learnt, and lessons could have been learnt from the 2001 outbreak. I appreciate that these outbreaks happen only rarely; I would have hoped that they would have been even rarer, but we will certainly want to continue to learn lessons on each occasion.

[Lord Plumb]

My Lords, I doubt whether the Minister will remember that some 40 years ago I had the privilege of announcing that we had totally eradicated bovine tuberculosis. He will know that 40,000 animals are lost to it every year at the moment, at a cost of £100 million. How are we going to deal with that in the future?

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, I would not want to make any comment about how we will deal with bovine TB, but my noble friend is right to stress how much it costs us each year. The figure that I have is in the order of £80 million and rising. We will, again, look at all evidence. We want all decisions to be made on an evidence-based model. We will make appropriate responses in due course.