Animal Welfare: Infectious Diseases

My Lords, like other noble Lords, I thank the noble Baroness and congratulate her on initiating this debate. I hope that it will be seen to be helpful and useful for those involved in the livestock sector. I shall not be able to do justice to all the points raised, but I want to put some issues on the record and answer as many detailed questions as possible. I shall start with two points, as that will save me having to raise them later—that is, the references to the cost and Defra’s responsibility-sharing programme. In December, we published a document for discussion over an 18-week consultation period involving a national seminar and 12 or 13 other seminars around the country. They have not yet finished. I have participated in two of them in some detail—in Stourport-on-Severn and last week in York—and this week I shall be in Carlisle. In those seminars, I heard some of the most measured contributions and debates on cost and responsibility-sharing that I have heard anywhere from farmers and from those representing the industry. The interactive parts of the seminars are facilitated by an independent person—they are not driven by Defra—and people believe that their views have been taken on board. This exercise is not about a policy as such but is intended to help us to construct a policy. It will be much later in the year before we can come forward with anything that resembles a policy, and there will then be further proper consultation on it. I cannot go beyond that; we are in the middle of the process. Another point that I want to clarify concerns interchangeability. I understand from the experts—I am not one of them—that references to animal health and animal welfare are interchangeable, but, to me, they are not. When I talk about animal welfare, I am referring to specific issues relating to work in Defra, and when I talk about animal health, I am talking about health issues. At the Select Committee last week, I specifically referred to animal welfare, not animal health, and I mentioned a welfare programme. Junior journalists from the Telegraph chose to connect that with the animal health budget but it was not true. I was not talking about the animal health budget; I was giving evidence on the Veterinary Surgeons Act. I was asked to give examples of Defra changing priorities, and the ones that I gave related to welfare, not health. That was the quote that the noble Lord read out. I was talking about something entirely different from the subject of this debate. The fact is that difficult decisions have had to be taken and they will be promulgated over time. I gave answers to the Select Committee but half of its members were asleep and they did not question me further on what I said. Last year was particularly challenging for the farming industry, with avian influenza, bluetongue and foot and mouth. They all had very serious consequences, which are with us today, as I fully accept. I realise that movement restrictions, markets being disrupted, prices being affected and exports being halted are absolutely tragic for some areas of the country. However, there is no doubt that the rapid introduction of tried and tested disease control measures showed that in 2007 we had learnt the lessons of the 2001 outbreak. Dr Anderson’s report, which is to be published imminently, will confirm that one way or the other. Although normal trading conditions have resumed, we have been left with the legacy of those outbreaks, which is substantial among hill farmers. We have been tackling these exotic outbreaks against the backdrop of the ongoing threat of bovine TB—although it is hardly a threat because we are having to live with it. It is the country’s biggest endemic animal health issue, costing the taxpayer some £80 million to £90 million a year, in addition to the even greater cost to farmers. I do not intend to mention the farms that I have visited because that would not compare with what the noble Lord, Lord Plumb, said when he explained how substantially people’s lives are affected by this disease. I recognise the strength of feeling. My views have been given to the Select Committee, which published an absolutely first-class report; some people have described it as a lifeboat. It remains to be seen what decisions are taken and I cannot go beyond that tonight. I would like to answer some of the details, but I am in no position to do so because decisions will be made and announced—we are not waiting for anything else—after the Defra report and all the other reports. Vaccine research is ongoing all the while. At the moment, it is illegal to vaccinate cattle for TB. We are doing the research and spending a fortune, but it is illegal to vaccinate. We do not have the vaccine, so the issue does not arise. Who would pay for vaccine for badgers? No one has asked that question. Someone will have to do it, but the Government have made it quite clear that they will not. I pay tribute to the work that the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, did for his initial report, but in answer to him I say that the Government have made it abundantly clear that they will not organise or pay for any cull of badgers. I cannot go beyond that because the position has been made clear in the Select Committee report. Further to badgers, there are the cattle-to-cattle issues, but the situation will become clearer once the Secretary of State has made the necessary decisions. The complexity of the issue cannot be overstated—I make no bones about that. There is more certainty surrounding bluetongue. On the discovery of the disease last year in England—we were expecting it—we were the first member state to place a vaccination order with a pharmaceutical company; we asked Intervet to supply over 20 million doses. We have in fact ordered 22.5 million: 2.5 million for Wales and 20 million for England. That was as a result of discussion with the industry—the figure was not plucked out of thin air. The order will ensure that the vaccine will be available from May; it is not available at present. No one has ordered the vaccine for type 8 strain. I cannot understand why the Belgians, the Dutch and the Germans have never ordered vaccine for type 8 strain, but they did not do so. I am told that they were not well organised. We will have the vaccine quite quickly and it will have temporary certification with the Veterinary Medicines Directorate. The efficacy will not be known until the vaccine is out in the field. It is important to point out that our current control measures—the bluetongue control strategy, which we published before the onset of bluetongue in this country, as we had been working on it for 18 months—relating to free movement, testing and surveillance, have been successful in picking up recent cases. I speak from memory now because I will not have time to go through all the notes. We have tested 40,000 cases. The ongoing surveillance for bluetongue is enormous. We found 25 extra cases, which tell us the degree of confidence that we have in the control and protection areas that we put in place. The testing has continued. The total number of positive cases did not quite reach three figures but we have tested 40,000. We appreciate that bluetongue will return. Either it has overwintered in the British midge or we shall get more plumes across the Channel as the weather changes. There is no doubt about that. Similar conditions have been put in place to tackle the threat of avian influenza. The practice of remaining vigilant, exercising good biodiversity, which has not always been the case in the poultry industry, and the rapid reporting of any suspicious symptoms associated with the disease among both wild and domestic stocks have minimised the risk surrounding each outbreak. I shall bring noble Lords up to date on the current situation. At the end of last month—effectively last week—we reported that a Canada goose, picked up as part of our wild bird surveillance programme, tested positive for the highly pathogenic H5N1 strain. The bird was found less than a mile from where the previous cases were collected earlier this year. As a result of that discovery, the exotic disease contingency plan was put in place and a wild bird control area was established around the affected area. The swift and effective way in which we have handled the latest outbreak and the outbreaks that have gone before could happen only with the full co-operation of the farming industry and domestic poultry keepers. I pay tribute to that excellent co-operation and give ever grateful thanks to the industry, which has worked very hard in co-operation with civil servants, vets, other agency workers and, of course, the wild bird reserves. I take this opportunity to congratulate everyone. The very unfortunate outbreak of foot and mouth—I use careful language to describe that—is a completely different disease. It spreads easily through the air and requires a completely different approach. On the noble Baroness’s point, it has been accepted that the second outbreak was part of the first. In fact, case five was actually case three. It was not reported by the farms concerned; it was not picked up. It had been more than 30 days since the previous outbreak. There was no evidence and no idea that there was still an outbreak around because all the normal checking had been done trying to find animals in an area of low density. We were ready to vaccinate, which is the question the noble Baroness asked. Unlike in 2001, there will be no argument about vaccinating as a principle. We are not against vaccination, which we proved with bluetongue. We will deal with it. With foot and mouth, compared with 2001, at the sign of the first outbreak—within hours—60 vets and officials were taken off the farms and placed in quarantine in hotels around the country. They were ready so that vaccination could have started an hour after the decision was made by Ministers and the vets. They were legitimately stood down on the basis that the outbreak looked controlled—a single source in a low-density-cattle part of the country. Unfortunately, we had the second phase of the first outbreak. The vets who had been stood down were stood up again—or different people were used—which is part of Defra’s public-good cost of taking 60 or 70 people out of work and into quarantine so that they are ready. Because of the nature of the outbreak, it was decided not to vaccinate. The nature, scale and low density of the population of cattle were the reasons for that. Otherwise, other decisions could have been taken. We have a grip on that outbreak and we hope that we will not have to deal with it again. As I said, Professor Anderson was asked by the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State to look at what Defra had done and to see whether we had learnt the lessons of 2001, and his report will be published imminently, but I cannot discuss the detail now. We are considering all the recommendations of the EFRA TB report and I cannot go beyond that for the noble Baroness who started the debate. I hope that I have answered her question on cost-sharing responsibility, which is an ongoing issue, and on which we will be reporting back in due course. I cannot say any more about badger culling. We will consider the impact of measures and what the science tells us. The noble Lord, Lord Krebs, was open about that. We also need to consider how practical and cost-effective the solution is for those who will pay for it, which is not the Government. The noble Lord, Lord Soulsby, asked about vaccines. We are spending a considerable amount of money on vaccination because, long-term, if it can be successful, it will certainly form part of a balanced package of measures. No one single issue will deal with that, but we are still maintaining our commitment to do research costing tens of millions of pounds. New diseases are arriving with climate change and bluetongue is a good example of that. It is probably a direct result of climate change; I say no more than that. As the noble Lord says, we may have to make the countryside a complete zone to continue trade. We do not want to close the countryside or damage ourselves unnecessarily. I can tell the noble Countess that I know we are open to criticism at whatever level, but the management of those exotic diseases by Defra staff last year was magnificent. As the Minister, I am incredibly proud of the department. One after another, we were hit by problems, for which you cannot usually plan. But we had planned and the precautionary measures were in place. Everybody knew what they had to do with the decision tree and the bird tables that were reporting in to get an early grip with a different plan for each of the diseases. To deal with more than one at the same time was incredibly complex, but I repeat that it could not have been done without the co-operation of the industry. I do not criticise the stakeholders. We go by the science, but we have to be practical about the industry. It is important to have people on board as much as possible. The noble Baroness asked about food imports. That has been raised a lot at the seminars on cost sharing. Along with HMRC, we have recently relaunched the campaign against the personal imports of meat. I have taken part in probably a dozen different slots for minority TV channels and radio stations around the country with a backdrop of what looks like 50 different languages on not bringing in personal imports. There have not been a lot of prosecutions, but there have been 8,000 stops at the airports in the last year for which I have figures. We target specific parts of the world because they are risky: the Caribbean and parts of south-east Asia. We stopped 1,200 people from New Zealand and Australia, but the big stops are from those risky areas. We warn people about prosecution, confiscation and massive delays at the airports. Why do we say, ““Don’t bring in personal imports of meat””? The first reason is animal health; the second is human health. There is a direct connection. We must protect ourselves. Although it is true that you can see the posters at the airports, they are not as massive as the ones in Australia. I was asked whether we ask people whether they have been on a farm in the past six months. I do not think that we do, but it seems a sensible question. When 90 million people are coming in or out, it is a simple question. We are an island and we can probably protect ourselves better than we do. I give my apologies but, on this debate, I will make an exception: anything that I have not covered, I will write to noble Lords about. On horse disease, the vigilance is such that notification of a potential African horse disease, which had been discovered by a vet, crossed my desk about five or six weeks ago. We were alerted quite quickly—within hours—of the possibility that we had found one for the first time, but the laboratory tests proved negative. That was good news, but the real news is that we were looking for it, the vets were alerted to the fact that it was a possibility and the tests were therefore put in place. The noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, raised the issue of fallen stock. The example that he mentioned was bluetongue, but we prefer vaccination as an alternative to slaughter for that. We made it clear after the first seven animals were slaughtered that we would not have a slaughter policy for bluetongue. The details on vaccination were developed with a core group of representatives from farming and veterinary organisations, the devolved Administrations and scientific experts. I shall conclude on this, because time is catching me up. The noble Lord, Lord Taylor, asked about the summer outbreak. On the impact of the summer outbreak of animal disease as well as the flooding—it is right to bring the two together—we announced what I accept is a modest package targeted to the hill farmers, with some money to the rural crisis charities. I am extremely grateful for the work of the agricultural charities, although we do not overly rely on them. I have had discussions with the banks during the winter and will be having further discussions with them on this issue shortly. We have some major issues to deal with. We are engaging fully with the lessons learnt. Apart from external people looking at what we did about particular diseases, there is no doubt that it would be useful to look at how this government department dealt with the emergencies over 2007 and to see whether it will be fit for purpose to do the same in the future and at the same time. The point is that the flooding came just before the foot and mouth; I realise that the after-effects were bad. The flooding was in June and July; foot and mouth hit us around 1 August; bluetongue hit us while we had foot and mouth; and in the mean time avian influenza was at both Bernard Matthews and the other place in Suffolk. I am not saying that what we did was perfect, but it was well managed and we are prepared. All our adjustments to both personnel and finance in Defra, which I accept are difficult, have not diminished our capacity to deal with these outbreaks. We may not get the solutions—compensation, financial arrangements and other packages—as quickly, but our top priorities are to deal with the disease, to get trade restored as quickly as possible, to protect animal health as far as we can and to deal with the consequences to humans. I assure noble Lords that we will not cut corners in those areas. On issues that I have not dealt with, I promise that I will put together a full letter.