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

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether the number of carcases and diagnostic samples submitted to each of the Veterinary Investigation Centres and contractor post-mortem examination facilities in each year since 2012 is representative of the animal populations in the areas they cover.

The main aim of scanning surveillance activities performed by the Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA) and the five non-APHA post-mortem examination partners in England and Wales is the timely detection and investigation of animal-related new and re-emerging diseases and threats in livestock and wildlife species. The representativeness of these surveillance activities with regard to the animal populations in the areas that they cover varies, and this is subject to a number of factors. Furthermore, scanning surveillance activities performed to achieve the main aim comprise more than just the throughputs and examination of carcases and diagnostic samples.

The Surveillance Intelligence Unit of the APHA, which was established in 2014, now monitors engagement with the surveillance network and maps this by species as a ratio of each livestock population. The engagement across England and Wales is not uniform. Areas of higher livestock density for a particular species tend to have higher engagement ratios. The Quarterly Emerging Threats reports are available on the Government’s website on the APHA animal disease surveillance reports page.