Examination of Witnesses (Questions 80
- 99)
WEDNESDAY 31 OCTOBER 2001
MR JIM
SCUDAMORE AND
MR ROY
HATHAWAY
80. One would perhaps argue that on a precautionary
basis you should, at least for an interval of, say, 7-14 days,
allow for an assessment of where the virus had got to, but I hesitate
to criticise. It is very easy to do so with hindsight and you
are quite right that farmers were immediately anxious about the
introduction of movement restrictions when they did come in, and
did not necessarily say, "Yes, that is necessary".
(Mr Scudamore) And even in the Northumberland report
it says control areas were localised and should only be used in
exceptional circumstances. In retrospect this was a very exceptional
circumstance.
David Taylor
81. In relation to livestock movements, to take
you back to the question of markets, you said that the 20-day
standstill would be helpful in controlling the flow of the disease,
but the proposal under consultation at the moment does exclude
markets, does it not? Would the inclusion of a requirement where
an animal has gone to market that it cannot go for a further 21
days to any other market, in your view, be helpful as well in
controlling the flow of disease?
(Mr Scudamore) Any system where animals mix, meet
and then go on to mix and meet with others poses a risk and, therefore,
if animals are going into markets and are mixing and then leaving
that market and going into another market, as happened in Hexham,
where they went on to Longtown, that does pose a potential risk.
If we have a 21-day standstill on the animals, however, they would
have left the market in Hexham and then had a 21-day standstill,
so we need to look at where animals are moving and where a 21-day
standstill would stop the disease spreading, but markets do pose
an additional risk where animals are mixing together and then
moving on. Equally we need to make sure that, if animals go into
markets, they do not pick the disease up from the market itself
so that comes back to the cleaning and disinfection that markets
go through which must be strictly enforced.
82. So there is a feeling that this would be
helpful?
(Mr Scudamore) It would be. Any restrictions on animals
mixings and moving would be helpful. Interestingly we issued some
booklets yesterday for farmers on restocking advice and one of
those is that they should know where the animals come from and
try and buy them direct to minimise bringing in other diseases.
Mr Drew
83. I mentioned earlier about asking the wrong
questions in terms of the Devon inquiry. Are you not personally
staggered by the number of illegal movements on the one hand and,
secondly, how do you deal with the dealers who, in this particular
outbreak, are putting illegal movements into practice?
(Mr Scudamore) On illegal movements, there are two
issues: One is movement before the outbreak occurred where they
were all legal—people were allowed to move animals and there
were no restrictions. On the question of illegal movement during
the outbreak, I do not have any figures on what has been happening
and what goes on. The enforcement authorities who enforce the
legislation in different counties have different statistics but
I do not have those with me on the question of illegal movements
and I am not sure whether there are huge numbers of illegal movements.
I do not think there are.
84. I think it would be useful if that could
come before the Select Committee. I know one of the difficulties
is that is held locally and it would be useful if it was held
nationally in terms of what we now ascertain the degree of the
problem was. What about the dealers?
(Mr Scudamore) The question about dealers comes back
to the 21-day rule. We come back to the fact that if animals are
bought, mixed and then sold on, every time that transaction takes
place from a veterinary point of view there is a potential for
disease spread and if animals are bought, mixed with other animals
and then sold on, there is a potential that disease can spread
from one animal to another. I think on the whole question of marketing
and dealers these are issues really for the lessons learnt inquiries
to use the information we are building up on the epidemiology
to try and decide what are the best mechanisms for controlling
disease, but there is no doubt that mixing animals in large numbers
and redistributing them can spread disease very quickly, as has
happened.
Chairman
85. Can I come to the various movement orders
and control, because what this epidemic has seen is a history
of schemes being devised in numbers and then ten days later the
poor infantry in North Yorkshire or Gloucestershire or whatever
still do not have any instructions on how to carry them out. In
most cases we had trading standards officers, most recently we
had the autumn movements and the DEFRA computers. In North Yorkshire,
for example, we had authorisations being made which should not;
we had one which was refused which should have been made; we had
the trading standards people going absolutely spare at the impossibility
of getting the DEFRA computer making any form of sense at all;
we had farmers going spare because they could not get through
to the trading standards because they could not get through to
DEFRA, and the whole thing became a mixture between a farce and
a nightmare. What are we going to do to make sure this chain of
command is improved so that people on the ground can carry out
instructions rapidly and are we now in a position for the autumn
movements to go ahead effectively, and has DEFRA sorted out its
rocket science?
(Mr Scudamore) You are being very hard on DEFRA in
all of this. We have stated quite clearly in the stakeholder meetings
that we have had regularly that this would be very difficult;
that there would be backlogs, delays, lots of people wanting to
move animals, and people's expectations needed to be held in check.
They could not just ring up, get a licence and move. The first
issue is we have made it clear to the industry that this autumn
was not normal and that there would not be normal movements; there
would be problems and their expectations of normal movements could
not be met. Secondly, we have developed a licensing system and
a computer system from scratch in virtually three months, and
whilst you might criticise the system and I am sure farmers are
not happy with it, the actual fact that we have created a system
that is working is a big tribute to our computer specialists and
the people putting it in place, and since the beginning of this
licensing system over 800,000 sheep have been licensed, 600,000
pigs and I do not know how many cattle. It is a new system; it
has had glitches—we accept that. I think there have been
two problems. One is that farmers' expectations have far outweighed
what we ever said it could deliver and in fact it is now delivering
well I believe into most areas and, secondly, it is a brand new
computer system that is licensing movements and it has had glitches
and problems. The final difficulty we have had is if we just said
animals could move from A to B the system could work, but what
we have said is animals can sometimes go from A to B, they can
sometimes go to C, they might be able to move within B, and as
the system has developed and we have relaxed the movement controls
we have had a more and more complex system which has had to be
built into the computer programme, so all those factors together
have meant that we have had serious difficulties and so have farmers
with the autumn movement licensing system, but I hope it is now
up and running and the backlogs and problems are being resolved.
86. But you do appreciate, I am sure, the position
of farmers at the top of a hill, for example, who have livestock
stuck, they cannot move, they are not earning anything. They are
not applying for normal movements; they are applying for exceptional
movements under the scheme which they have been informed about
exists for their benefit and the sheer sense of frustration and
almost desperation is palpable really. They have found even that
very restricted movement is so difficult to get to work and if
you want to get it under a welfare scheme you have to wait for
ages before you can get on to the scheme. It is almost as if there
is a grudgingness built into the technology.
(Mr Hathaway) Part of the difficulty is that the disease
eradication picture changes day-by-day and the veterinary and
scientific advice therefore on what is the safe movement of animals
reflects that changing situation, so the restrictions on movement
have to be proportionate to the disease risk. The autumn movement
system was designed to allow the maximum number of movements we
could consistent with not seeing a big risk of resurgence of the
disease from the increased volume of movements. We could have
introduced a very simple system which would probably have been
more restrictive but what we have tried to do is, as veterinary
and scientific advice has advanced with the state of the outbreak,
the movements have become more and more relaxed to reflect that,
so they are still proportionate to the remaining problem. This
does mean that the system is complicated; it changes; and does
require changes to the computer system. We have tried to impose
discipline within DEFRA so we are not in a position where we announce
relaxations that the computer system is not in a position to deliver
within a reasonable timeframe. I think we have now got to a position
where we can say that we have done that.
87. Can you give us an end date for serological
testing? You said in previous evidence that we did not just have
to be disease free but virus free, and you emphasised how important
it is for blood testing to be able to declare areas free of the
disease. Can you give us a date when, short of there being obvious
new problems arising, you expect that process to be finished and
when the light at the end of the tunnel will become more pervasive?
(Mr Scudamore) I cannot give you an end date. What
I can try and give you is the criteria on which we would base
an end date. The first part is we would want no disease for three
months which would fit with international requirements. Secondly,
we want all the counties which are on one of the maps in the free
category of county. Thirdly, we would want to have completed all
the serological testing in the protection zones and the surveillance
zones and in those counties where we think there is an additional
risk, such as the South Powys and the Devon area, which we are
getting on very well with. When we have completed that, in January
we will need to take a hard long look at the serological results
we have and then have to evaluate what we have found. The question
then is whether we are in a position to say we are virus free,
and I cannot say at the moment what we will be able to say. What
I can say is we have done over two million blood tests now, and
I should say that the laboratories delivering that have done a
tremendous amount. They have gone from 400 tests when we started
and we now do 180,000 a week and we have done two million tests.
The evidence is quite clear from those tests that in the protection
zone we have 29 positive flocks out of 9000 and in the surveillance
zone about 7 positive flocks so we do not have a major problem
of endemic disease in sheep in this country, but we still have
to keep doing the tests to make sure we have not got any virus.
I think the end date I can give you is that in January we will
take a long hard look at where we are, what we have done and what
serology we have done, and between now and then we will be taking
into account the results of the serology and trying to define
whether we need to do any more in February or March. At the same
time we are working with the European Union to get exports moving.
We can already export pig meat; we can export beef from the counties
that have never had disease, and we will be continuing with the
European Union to try and get exports moving anyway in the interim
period.
88. So the three month countdown starts from
that January date?
(Mr Scudamore) No. It starts from the last case which
we confirmed which is 30 September at the moment, and all the
serology we are doing. So in mid-January we should have had the
three months if we get no more cases, we should have completed
most of the serology for the protection zones, surveillance zones
and general surveillance, and we should hopefully have had most
counties in the clear category. We then have to look at what evidence
we have, because we then have to present a case to the World Health
Organisation in Paris for them to ratify that we are free of disease.
Diana Organ
89. The policy that went on through the foot
and mouth disease is that scientists gave advice to ministers
and ministers then made decisions about policy that needed to
be communicated and hopefully convince farmers and people in the
rural areas that this was the line to take. Could you tell me
how much influence on the advice that scientists gave to Government
was from the fact that the NFU made it quite clear that they would
not accept vaccination in the early stages: they wanted eradication
of the disease?
(Mr Scudamore) The Government got its advice in a
number of different ways, in fact. The first one was that we had
a stakeholder meeting which involved all those with an interest
in farming and retail and other industries and they were held
weekly, and when we were discussing changes to policy and recommending
different options, we discussed those with them.
90. I am talking about at the very beginning
when the decision of what policy was taken, before the stakeholder
meetings were set up. How much were the scientists that were giving
advice to ministers aware of the particular line that the NFU
wanted to take when we were talking about when to bring in movement
stoppages, that we would not use vaccination, we would use a culling
policy, right at the very beginning?
(Mr Scudamore) When the outbreak started on 20 February,
the national policy, which is the same as the EU policy, was that
if we had an outbreak of the foot and mouth disease it would be
controlled by culling. The national policy was if there was an
outbreak of foot and mouth disease, we would identify, restrict
the farm, cull the farm out, remove all the dangerous contact
farms. That was the national policy at the time and that was based
on experiences from 1967 and on European Union discussions, so
the policy was quite clear when we started the outbreak on 20
February.
91. For instance, I see that the Royal Society
inquiry is taking evidence from Professor Fred Brown of the US
Department of Agriculture Plum Island Animal Disease Centre and
anybody looking at the Internet over the foot and mouth disease
time will know that Fred Brown had a completely different view
about the policy that should have been taken on this. How much
did we take that kind of advice? Concerning vaccination in particular
his line was very different.
(Mr Scudamore) We took advice from a range of scientists.
In fact, very early on in the outbreak I commissioned some work
from the FAO in Rome where there is a European Union foot and
mouth disease group on the use of the vaccine and when it could
be applied. We took advice from the World Reference Laboratory
at Pirbright which is where Fred Brown had previously worked so
we took advice from the experts there and latterly we took advice
from the science group, so we were taking advice from a range
of experts on vaccination.
92. Farmers and local people in the rural areas
were very much affected by the policies that were taken and obviously
at times did not have complete trust in the advice that scientists
or advisers were giving to ministers. How much has there been
continual damage to that due to the fact that the IAH study on
BSE and the UK sheep population in the early 1990s has been obviously
flawed and not a robust scientific inquiry? How much has that
affected future public trust in taking what scientists say as
being good advice to ministers, whether it is on food safety,
on animal health issues, on farming policy generally? Are people
going to accept it now?
(Mr Scudamore) There are two questions there. If I
can answer the first on vaccination and scientific advice, what
is quite apparent is that there are lots of differing views and
resolving those is one of the reasons we, with the other countries,
have got this FMD conference in December. So there is considerable
difference of opinion amongst vets, scientists and all sorts of
people on whether you should or should not vaccinate, and that
will I hope be discussed at this conference to get some resolution
as to whether one does or does not, because it is a very complex
subject and there is no straightforward easy answer. You cannot
just have a rule which says, "You will do this in certain
circumstances". I think one issue is that vaccination is
an issue that needs a lot of discussion and investigation, both
on the science and on the practical reality of vaccinating and
the impact of vaccinating. On the question of science, it is unfortunate
that one mistake in an experiment is giving the impression that
British science is flawed which I certainly do not believe. What
happened was that this experiment was conducted in collecting
brains from 3000 sheep in 1990-1992. The experiment that was set
up to be done was completed: it was then decided to use the material
later on for another experiment, and what we need to do is await
the audit results which are in place to find out what happened
and then I think learn the lessons from that. One could well be
that, if you set up one experiment with a series of protocols,
you need to look to see whether you can use that material for
another experiment if the protocols from the first do not meet
the requirements of the second one. So I think there are lots
of lessons to learn from this case and I think the audit will
hopefully show us what happened and what needs to be done.
93. Obviously there are problems about convincing
the public that scientists do not just make it up as they go along.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing and very few of us have that great
gift, but let's say we were starting today with what looked like
the beginning of another terrible outbreak of foot and mouth spreading
in pigs. Would you give the same scientific advice to ministers
absolutely that you gave before? Do you think it would be possible
to do that and to be robust about it?
(Mr Scudamore) The difficulty we face is what is our
national policy. That is where there has to be debate. At the
moment national policy is to identify disease, remove the animals
and remove contact animals that have been exposed.
94. So as a vet you think that is the best policy?
(Mr Scudamore) I will come on to that in a moment.
The Taiwanese had an outbreak in pigs and they removed large numbers
of pigs. They then changed their policy to vaccination so they
now vaccinate their pigs and they still have disease, so they
have no exports and they vaccinate their pigs as an on-going commitment
which is expensive and does not get rid of the disease. The difficulty
we faced all along with this is what would be the trigger factors
to vaccinate and what would vaccination achieve. I think I said
at the last select committee that it depends on the national policy.
If it is to eradicate disease then you might use vaccination in
certain circumstances to assist in doing that. If your policy
is to live with the disease, then you move into the routine vaccination
but one of the things I hope that comes out of the Royal Society
is that we need to look at vaccines to see whether we can get
different but better vaccines, whether we can identify infected
versus vaccinated animals more effectively and whether there is
a way in which vaccination can be used. Nobody in the veterinary
profession likes to kill animals—it is not what we are trained
to do—but if we are trying to eradicate a disease then at
the end of that eradication process you have to remove the infected
animals.
95. But as a vet do you think the policy is
wrong to cull?
(Mr Scudamore) I think the policy to eradicate the
disease has to have culling and I think as it stands at the moment
we would wish to eradicate the disease and we have done that—so
far. We still do not know whether we have virus in the country.
My view is we should eradicate the disease by culling but we do
need to look at whether newer and better vaccines have a part
to play in that and whether we can eradicate the disease using
those vaccines.
Chairman: We are going to move on to the question
of vaccine now because at various times over the last few months
officials and ministers have hinted that they were tempted by
vaccination and have recommended it, never to have seen it again,
so we would really like to nail this down a little bit.
Mr Martlew
96. I was very interested in what Mr Scudamore
has just said. He seems to have learned no lessons from the cull.
The reality is that the damage done to the economy beyond what
MAFF was responsible for at the time was so great that to close
the footpaths and have the cull again would not be acceptable
in Cumbria. Coming back to the question of ministers being informed,
it is obvious to me as the MP for Carlisle that in the early stages,
somewhere along the line, MAFF were not telling the ministers,
the seriousness of the problem in Cumbria and it was only when
Joyce Quin, the minister, came to see for herself that they realised
the problem. I would like your comments on that. Moving on to
the question of vaccination, at the moment we have a policy that
presumes that foot and mouth is introduced accidentally into the
country, and I accept that that is what has happened on the last
case. I think the Chairman of the Defence Select Committee was
asked whether it was bioterrorism and I am sure it was not, but
what would we do if somebody deliberately intended to introduce
foot and mouth into this country in a number of sites? Surely
the only option in the future will be vaccination?
(Mr Scudamore) There are a whole lot of questions
there. The question on vaccination is why are you vaccinating.
If your concern is that foot and mouth would be introduced, one
option is to vaccinate the whole of the national flock and the
national pig population routinely. The question then arises what
do you vaccinate against. I remember working abroad when we vaccinated
against one strain of FMD virus, the South African strain, and
all the animals went down with foot and mouth and we found we
had a slightly different strain. The first problem is, if you
are going to vaccinate routinely in the country, the first difficulty
is what you vaccinate against because there are seven strains
and within each of those strains there are large numbers of other
strains, and you do not get cross immunity, so the problem we
would face is you might decide to vaccinate against the FMD that
we have at the moment, but the introduction might be an entirely
different strain which would be completely pointless because the
animals could go down with the disease. So on prophylactic, national
vaccination the difficulty is deciding what to vaccinate against.
Secondly, vaccination is not very effective with foot and mouth
disease in terms of pigs in particular, because to be effective
you have to have an immune population, and the pig population
changes so rapidly with the number of pigs being born and the
type of industry, that you would end up with susceptible animals,
infected animals and incubating animals and immune animals—a
whole range of animals—so vaccinating in that circumstance
means you would actually have to live with the disease. If you
are going to do that, there are implications beyond purely veterinary
issues, so the question is do you wish to trade and how. If you
are going to export beef, are you going to mature and debone it?
If you are going to export pig meat, would you be allowed to?
I think whilst we might have veterinary views, the whole issue
on vaccination and the disease is a much broader issue, as you
say. It is a rural issue, it is a trade issue, an economic issue.
All these issues need to be brought together so we have a nationally
agreed policy.
97. Obviously they vaccinate in Taiwan because
the scale of the problem would be massive. To get rid of the pig
population in Taiwan would be a task that they decided not to
do so it actually works to an extent there. I am just concerned
that you seem to think that the policy we have had is a success,
because what we have been through over the last six months cannot
be classed as a success?
(Mr Scudamore) I certainly do not think the policy
is a success. What we have done is we have eliminated the disease
and we are still checking that we have eliminated the virus. In
doing that we have killed large numbers of animals.
98. I get the impression that, if it happened
again, you would be recommending the same policy. Is that correct?
(Mr Scudamore) I think what I am trying to say is
there are inquiries which will be looking at lessons learnt; there
is debate in Europe in December; and we cannot determine our own
veterinary policy. There are so many other issues involved and
we have to have a discussion and a debate on what is required
in Europe in terms of controlling foot and mouth disease. Is it
that we eradicate it, or do we live with it, or work out different
ways of handling it? But I agree that the impact on the rural
economy has been tremendous, so that needs to come into the equation.
Chairman
99. There were moments over the last six months
when you have said that you were ready to recommend vaccination
for a specific purpose and Professor King has said the same. Could
you clarify for us now what were those moments? What were the
particular circumstances which at that time led you to say to
ministers, "You may wish to undertake a programme of vaccination"?
(Mr Scudamore) Yes. There were two different issues.
One was where we recommended to ministers to vaccinate and the
second one was where we did contingency planning in case we wished
to recommend to ministers to vaccinate. So the first one is where
we formally recommended that we should vaccinate in north Cumbria
and the basis of that recommendation was, very early on in the
disease, we did not know what the situation was in sheep because
we had no serological method of going out and doing large scale
testing. It was our belief that there were large numbers of sheep
in Cumbria which had been infected as a result of movements from
Longtown market into the Solway Firth area and other areas. We
were concerned with the escalation of cases in north Cumbria that
when the cattle were turned out in the spring and came into contact
with those sheep they would go down with the disease, and therefore
we recommended that we should vaccinate cattle in north Cumbria,
first of all, to prevent them going down with disease if they
came into contact with sheep and, secondly, to save cattle. If
the animals were vaccinated then we negotiated in Brussels an
arrangement where they did not have to be killed, unlike the Dutch
who did kill them. The arrangement we negotiated in Brussels was
that we could vaccinate the cattle in Cumbria; we had to keep
a record of their ear tags; we had to take their passports off
so they could be stamped as vaccinated, and any movement of milk
or meat out of Cumbria had to meet certain requirements. So the
milk leaving Cumbria had to be pasteurised in a certain way and
animals going for the slaughter from Cumbria had to be slaughtered
in dedicated abattoirs, the meat had to be deboned, and it had
to be matured as it would from any other country with foot and
mouth disease which was vaccinating. So that was what was negotiated
and that was what was recommended. We put in place the contingency
plan to do that using ADAS and setting up about 150 teams that
could go through Cumbria vaccinating the cattle. There were disadvantages
to doing that in as much as animals incubating the disease would
have continued to get the disease and the vaccination teams moving
through the county always posed a potential risk of taking disease
with them. So if they were on farm where the animals were incubating
disease and then they vaccinated, disinfected and then went to
another farm, there was always a risk they could take the disease
with them to the next farm. That was the recommendation we made
to ministers, therefore—to vaccinate those cattle in Cumbria.
Regarding the second issue, working up contingency plans to decide
whether we would vaccinate or recommend vaccination, we did that
in about seven other areas. So we developed a possible plan for
dealing with the Settle/Clitheroe area because we were concerned
that, if the disease moved down from Clitheroe into north east
Lancashire, there were a lot of very big dairy herds and we were
looking at the possibility of vaccinating those herds. We looked
at vaccination in Humberside, as I mentioned at the last Select
Committee. We looked at the possibility of vaccinating on the
Brecon Beacons in sheep. We looked at a number of other possibilities
in Leicestershire—when we had the two slaughter on suspicion
cases in Leicestershire recently we contemplated the possibility
of a ring vaccination around those that had been confirmed—and
we looked at various other options of vaccination. In all of those
cases the trigger factor to initiate the vaccination did not exist
so we did not vaccinate. As it turns out we did not need to because
the areas we were looking to vaccinate did not actually get any
disease.
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