Examination of Witness (Questions 260
- 261)
WEDNESDAY 7 NOVEMBER 2001
PROFESSOR ROY
ANDERSON
260. Where farmers live in an area which has
had heavy infection but they have not themselves had the disease,
they have got this immense problem of trying to carry out normal
farming business, and we have seen the movement restrictions in
place then gradually removed, we have seen the colossal problems
because the wretched computer at DEFRA just does not work, and
so that the Trading Standards have had infernal difficulties in
actually trying to implement the rules. How do you draw the balance
between a farmer saying, "Look, at the moment I'm suffering
in three ways, my bank balance is suffering because I can't sell
anything, the environment is suffering because I am massively
overstocked because I haven't been able to sell anything, and
the animals are suffering because there are too many of them sucking
the last pebble;" how is that balance drawn?
(Professor Anderson) It is a horrible tightrope, and
the Government has been walking this, in terms of policy formulation,
for some time, between the very understandable husbandry needs
versus the absolute desire to get rid of this before winter, colder
weather prolongs the potential survival of the virus, and I really
cannot give you an answer to that, I think it has to be based
on local knowledge to do with the suffering. My own instinct,
I think, at the moment, is to perhaps err more on the side of
restricting movements, so that we are absolutely certain that
we have got rid of FMD. But that is more a question to aim at
the veterinary staff who have the husbandry problems. Could I
add something, Chairman, to your comment about databases, that
one of the difficulties we had from day one was to do with data,
and one of the real needs, as a lesson for this in the future,
is that we need for agriculture in this country an integrated
database which records a variety of information. For example,
MAFF has a census which gives a grid reference for farms; when
we first got this, we found a number of farms in the middle of
the North Sea, admittedly it was not a high frequency, but there
is a problem with the databases. Secondly, you need to know the
grid references for the farmhouse, you need to know the number
of contiguous or disparate land parcels belonging to a farm, the
number of animals of different livestock species on that farm;
in an ideal world, you would also have tags for everything, not
just cattle, but particularly for sheep and pigs, such that, in
a modern, computationally available world, you could track the
movements of animals via these ear-tags. And then you would put
all this in a very integrated database which would serve you very
well for the next problem. It is not whether you will have another
problem, you will have another problem, so you need that infrastructure
in place as quickly as possible.
Chairman: It may be some comfort to know that
in Manchester, when I did regeneration, we discovered whole streets
with no postcode whatsoever.
Mr Jack
261. I am interested in terms of what we might
have learned from all of the matters that we have discussed and
analysed about preventative policies for the future, because we
currently have, on a farm-by-farm basis, biosecurity measures
which are likely to lapse as we come to the end of the outbreak.
One of the other bits of evidence that we have heard is that there
is not a clear indication as to how the disease has spread; there
are methods by which it is spread which are known but there is
no analysis to say what is the most prevalent way in which it
moves around. We have also heard that there are other, potential
animal diseases out there which could strike at any time. Does
the work that you have done inform us as to what we should do
to try, for example, to run some sort of permanent biosecurity
regime which is practical and affordable but which might act as
a brake, either on a future FMD outbreak or some other, hitherto
unknown, problem coming in?
(Professor Anderson) That is a very important question.
Probably the thing that one should start off doing is ranking
the ten most serious threats, in terms of the pathogens that could
cause devastation in livestock, and I would broaden that, of course,
to poultry, and also indeed to fish-farming too, because that
is a significant economic activity in certain parts of Great Britain,
rank these. Then each problem is different, sadly; it is like
bovine TB and BSE versus foot and mouth. For foot and mouth, speed
is of the essence, draconian movement restrictions, instantaneously.
In other problems, speed is not necessarily of the essence, it
is identifying the prime focus of spread. So, I think, with each
of these ten most important diseases, and try to get some consensus
from the European and international community about how this ranking
should be constructed, then do some preliminary research on constructing
risk maps for the UK, there are risk maps in this Nature October
publication by the Imperial team for the fast-spreading type virus,
and then try to build on that, to think about, for each of these
diseases, what are the most important preventative strategies
to have on the table so that they can be implemented on day one.
With the sort of magnifying lens of hindsight, it is always very,
very easy to look back at the mistakes that are made in each epidemic,
whether it is AIDS, foot and mouth or BSE, and it seems ludicrous
to say that a three-day delay, from the 20th to the 23rd, was
crucial, but it was crucial. So each case is different, and you
have to plan and have a contingency plan which is constantly updated,
in light of modern scientific techniques, like can you diagnose
in the field, have you got a good vaccine, how realistic is it
to put in place movement restrictions for more than a certain
period of time due to the husbandry of that species. Then there
is also all the issues, which is a complicated but fascinating
and addressable problem, about the movement of livestock once
they are going to slaughter, because, often, with e-coli, they
can be contaminated, so it is not just the agricultural it is
the food industry as well that is important.
Chairman: Professor Anderson, thank you very
much. I think you were worth waiting for. I am sorry we kept you
waiting. And I have no doubt that there will be other episodes
still to come; but thank you very much indeed for today.
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