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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what the preparedness is of the Animal and Plant Health Agency to react to and control a potential future animal health outbreak similar in scale to the foot and mouth outbreak of 2001.

The Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA), compiles the UK contingency plan for exotic notifiable disease that sits above plans designed by Defra and the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Ireland Governments.

These are key documents that describe the strategic, tactical and operational responses required to any incursion of exotic notifiable disease, such as foot and mouth disease. These plans are complemented by specific GB disease control strategies and APHA work with the Government Departments in each administration to produce the necessary operational instructions.

To ensure the plans and instructions are fit for purpose, the UK runs a national animal disease exercise roughly every other year on various exotic diseases and we regularly include foot and mouth disease in those exercises.

The next national exercise will be in June 2018 and will be based on a foot and mouth disease scenario.

APHA also create and manage an annual programme of regional or country exercises designed to identify best practice and any gaps in existing plans or procedures. They also run table-top exercises for APHA’s policy customers to identify issues that may arise from new and emerging threats such as African Horse Sickness.