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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment he has made of the level of capability for (a) sourcing and (b) deploying a vaccine in relation to an outbreak of foot and mouth.

The UK has been free of Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD) since 2007 and has plans in place to manage the risk of this disease as set out in the Foot and Mouth Disease Control Strategy for Great Britain supported by the Contingency plan for exotic notifiable diseases of animals in England. Defra and the Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA) keep preparedness under continual review but are refocusing efforts following the confirmation of FMD in Germany.

In the event of an outbreak, alongside culling and movement controls, vaccination would be considered as a control option. To that end, the UK has a vaccine bank for a variety of FMD serotypes. Any decision to vaccinate will be based on expert advice across a range of factors.

APHA leads Government action on animal disease control and has outbreak response plans in place. These include measures to contract companies to support eradication and provide additional veterinary capacity. Response times are kept under regular review, and APHA is in the planning stages of a national exercise to test and validate our response to an outbreak of FMD, scheduled for 2025/26.

In response to the outbreak of FMD in Germany, Government has taken decisive and rapid action to protect the UK from FMD by suspending the commercial import of susceptible animals and untreated products of animal origin from Germany and restricting personal imports of animal products from across the EU. We continue to review our preparedness and will take the necessary action to protect our FMD freedom.