Defra: Disease Outbreaks

Countess of Mar Excerpts

Thursday 27th January 2011 Lords Chamber

Asked By

[The Countess of Mar]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what contingency funding the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has for disease outbreaks.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Henley)]

My Lords, no specific funding is set aside for disease outbreaks. However, we do a great deal of work preparing for disease outbreaks to prevent incursions and to minimise impact in the event of an outbreak.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Countess of Mar]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for that reply. Does he appreciate that this is the 10th year since the foot and mouth epidemic in 2001 and that Exercise Silver Birch seemed to demonstrate that we have not progressed much further with, for example, the validation of field gate tests and the acceptance of vaccination by abattoirs? The excuse given by the trade is, apparently, that the public do not like vaccination, but the public eat vaccinated meat all the time. What is being done to improve the validation of field-side tests, blood tests that distinguish between vaccinated and non-vaccinated animals and farm gate tests?

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Countess for reminding us that it is only 10 years since the last major outbreak of foot and mouth, which she, I and many others remember well. I am also grateful to her for mentioning Exercise Silver Birch, which has recently concluded. It was a fairly major exercise organised by Defra, the devolved Administrations and many others, in which more than 600 people took part to look at how a foot and mouth outbreak might affect England, Scotland and Wales. The important thing to remember about it is that it will report in due course. I hope that lessons can be learnt from the report when it is published in, we hope, March of this year. That will probably be when I can comment in more detail on the further points that the noble Countess made, which are very valid at this stage.