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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if he will hold discussions with his counterparts in the devolved Administrations on bovine spongiform encephalopathy.

The UK has a comprehensive surveillance programme in place to monitor the level of BSE over time and check on the continued effectiveness of our BSE controls. It was the effectiveness of these controls that recently identified a case in Scotland. Defra officials have engaged closely with Scottish counterparts on this matter, as they do regularly on animal disease issues more broadly with officials from all UK administrations under the Animal Health and Welfare Framework.