Examination of Witnesses (Questions 200
- 219)
Wednesday 16 July 2003
PROFESSOR SIR
DAVID KING
AND PROFESSOR
JOE BROWNLIE
Q200 Paddy Tipping: Have you had
discussions with Defra about this?
Professor Sir David King: Yes.
My views are well known up to Number 10 and I have also had the
opportunity, through Defra's contacts with the farming community,
of discussing this with groups of farmers.
Q201 Paddy Tipping: What feedback
are you getting to these ideas?
Professor Sir David King: That
the idea seems a bit radical.
Q202 Paddy Tipping: You are putting
it politely.
Professor Sir David King: Interestingly,
I know from talking to them there is a large number of farmers
now who feel they can point a finger at local farmers who are
poorly behaved and they themselves would like to see something
done to protect their own means of earning a living. The question
of better surveillance, better biosecurity, possible farming licences
and the question of markets are real issues that need to be aired.
Q203 Paddy Tipping: If I understood
you correctly, you are saying we can reduce the period for travelling,
the quarantine period, but in a sense there may be a case for
saying we have to license farms that have livestock to give rights
of entry for inspection. That will not go down well among some
sections of the farming community.
Professor Sir David King: Those
sections of the farming community that would like to avoid a 2001
type epidemic ever occurring again might welcome it.
Q204 Mr Wiggin: I do not agree with
what Mr Tipping was saying because my understanding is essentially
what you are telling us is that if I never take my daughter out
of my house she is unlikely to get chickenpox. If I never go to
China I am not going to get SARS. The point that we really are
struggling here is that there was never an inquiry as to how foot
and mouth got to Heddon-on-the-Wall in the first place and perhaps
that should have been done. Equally, should our poultry people
be going to Holland where avian flu is? The answer almost definitely
is not. They should not go abroad to where the risk is very high.
That is common sense. The problem I feel you are dealing with
is what do we do once the horse has bolted. How hard do we slam
the door? Do you not think we really ought to protect at our ports
and at our points of entry rather than blaming disease on a group
of people who rely on the government to ensure that the standards
of meat and infection risk that comes into this country are policed
properly? They have failed.
Professor Sir David King: I am
very well aware of your argument. Obviously, port of entry protection
ought to be proportionate.
Q205 Mr Wiggin: You will not go any
stronger than that?
Professor Sir David King: Proportionate
means in proportion to the risk and also in proportion to what
you can achieve by it. When you have a large amount of goods coming
into the country in containers, it is really not always going
to be feasible to protect the country from illegal imports of
the kind that we believe lay behind the Heddon-on-the-Wall outbreak.
We have to do both, in my view. You have to do what you can at
the port of entry, but you also have to look at the possibility
occurring of the horse bolting. In that case, I think it must
be absolutely clear that if we continue to have markets operating
as they are now and not as they were in 1967—that is, with
very long scale movements from the markets right across the country—we
will always run the risk of a local outbreak being converted into
a national epidemic.
Q206 Mr Wiggin: The pig example that
you gave is only true for pigs that are going to end up being
eaten. Breeding stock still does go through a livestock market.
Indeed, Hereford Market does have a pig day. The problem is that
essentially, when you are dealing with people's livestock and
their livelihoods, they do really need to see their animals. Therefore,
we cannot ever get away from the need for stockmen who inspect
stock. The way we arrange for that to happen may be possible through
a different format. I am not advocating a video, but if you buy
one pig you can go and see it on its farm rather than bringing
the pig to the market. I do not see how we are going to get away
from that. Have you any suggestions?
Professor Sir David King: The
pig farming community have shown a way. I realise that pigs are
not sheep are not cattle.
Q207 Mr Wiggin: They still go to
market.
Professor Sir David King: They
still go to market, but only in the case of breeders and that
is a very much smaller number. If you look at the tracings that
were done throughout the FMD epidemic in 2001, you will see that
it was proportionate to the number of animals going to market.
That is what was causing the spread of the epidemic in that first
phase, which sent it around the whole country.
Q208 Mr Wiggin: You do not think
it is the fact that there is a ewe subsidy as to why sheep go
through markets and are dealt with by dealers?
Professor Sir David King: No.
I did refer to the fact that the pig farmers themselves would
be financially suffering; whereas in the case of the sheep and
the cattle farmer it was the taxpayer who stepped in.
Q209 Mr Wiggin: They still suffered.
Professor Sir David King: Let
me give you a simple personal fact. Over a period of three months,
my family home in Cambridge was robbed twice. As a result I got
a letter from my insurance company saying, "You will have
to put the following into practice if you are going to continue
to be insured" and it cost me about £1,600 to have my
house meet the demands of the insurance company. I paid that out
of my pocket because I knew when the next burglary came along
the taxpayer was not going to cover me. I raised my biosecurity
level precisely because I knew I would suffer.
Mr Wiggin: Did you let your local MP
know how unhappy you were with the policing?
Q210 Mr Drew: The one thing you have
not mentioned is the insurance based models. I have been dealing
with a group of academics who maintain that long term the only
way you will get any sensible purchase over animal disease is
when farmers, rather than relying upon a compensatory system when
things go wrong, are encouraged to prevent things from going wrong.
The best prevention is when they are directly responsible for
having taken on an insurance policy. I know the government did
look at this and Elliot Morley has given us evidence on more than
one occasion. I am linking it to our inquiry on vets because that
is what we are really talking about in as much as one of the precursors
to that would be your animals are regularly checked and they have
veterinary certificates and so on. Is that something that you
would advocate and have talked to the government about?
Professor Sir David King: Yes,
it is. The government is also looking at a levy or insurance and
I would go one step further. Biosecurity arrangements would determine
the level of levy that you would be charged. I would take it one
step further and say, if you want markets, the level is ten times
what it would be if you can operate without markets. In other
words, provide incentives down the levy line. There are all sorts
of radical ideas we could come up with. Whether they are capable
of implementation or not is another matter.
Q211 Mr Lazarowicz: Are you satisfied
with the progress that has been made on contingency plans for
foot and mouth disease and the other exotic diseases which have
now been increasingly identified as threats?
Professor Sir David King: We are
back to the animal health and welfare strategy document. Here,
the question for me is the following: during the foot and mouth
disease epidemic, I formed a science group of people that included
Professor Brownlie as one of the members. We met every day during
that epidemic and I reported into COBRA in the morning and in
the evening. We kept very close tabs on what was happening. We
were able to give advice at Prime Minister level right down directly,
unfiltered advice, and I think that for any system of containing
an outbreak of this kind that is what you need: broad based advice,
not only brought in from the department concerned, but also brought
in and challenged by experts outside the department.
Professor Brownlie: You started
off with the aims of the website. One is all for grand aims. Whether
you achieve them or not is another matter but you need to have
a vision. I do not criticise that vision. What is the problem
is that there is risk from introduced diseases, either the ones
we know or the ones we do not know yet. We do not have the expertise
to understand or deal with them. I think it is very important
to understand that with globalisation of trade and movement the
risk is worldwide. The foot and mouth virus did not come into
the UK from nearby European Countries; it came, very likely, from
the Indian sub-continent from where many people arrive every day.
I think we are unwise to think too parochially. We have to think
on a wide scale. The way to increase our chance of responding
to disease is by having the expertise. If we have the expertise
in the country, we are in a better position to deal with it. The
expertise is all very well in research centres, which we do have
to have, but it needs to feed out into the practitioner because
the practitioner is going to be the first person to see that.
The man who can distinguish porcine circovirus from swine fever
is a smart man. If we do not do that, we are confusing an exotic
disease with an endemic disease and allowing it to move on. One
of the most important aspects in surveillance is going to be having
enough expertise to cover the areas which you need to cover. We
could discuss further what expertise is and how we are going to
make sure we have that but in the livestock sector there are some
real concerns about where this expertise is coming from and the
way it is being supported.
Q212 Chairman: I was hoping you were
going to tell me where the deficiencies were in the expertise.
Professor Brownlie: All right.
This is a private meeting. It is only just reported to the world,
I guess.
Q213 Chairman: It is only private
as far as the broadcast is concerned, but it is between us. You
carry on.
Professor Brownlie: If you look
at the veterinary schools, they have the prime objective of delivering
the next generation of veterinarians who are able to deal with
disease and with the conditions they see in practice, the next
generation of veterinary surgeons. They need to provide the role
models that inspire the students to go into the various compartments
in the veterinary profession. We know those are quite wide but
one of the ones that seems to be less attractive, or is reputed
to be less attractive, is livestock farming. That is not entirely
true. All the vets' schools devote a considerable amount of time
to teaching livestock medicine and surgery but there are only
very few teachers who are truly inspiring and those are the ones
that make the impact. You do need role models that will impress
upon the students that livestock farming is a worthwhile and very
important career. If you are going to have the role models and
the expertise, you are going to have to allow them to be research
active because good teachers need to have a research base. Students
need to see their role models delivering to the BVA conference,
being the top person in the British Cattle Veterinary Association,
at the points that students are seeing that they are leaders.
The funding into livestock research is problematical. Coming back
to your question, where are the deficiencies, I think it is in
the research base. We now have a great deal more investment into
exotic disease, into blue tongue, foot and mouth, but the endemic
diseases are being left behind. They are equally important, if
not more important, for the practitioners. Where you have a competence
to deal with endemic disease, you have a competence to deal with
exotic disease as well because you have that base of competence.
Those are some of the issues that are required by having a truly
powerful and valuable surveillance programme.
Q214 Mr Lazarowicz: We are looking
very much at the governmental side. We have of course now the
division between policy and delivery with the chief veterinary
officer no longer being responsible for the state veterinary service
but being responsible for policy and directly responsible for
delivery. What effect will that have on future notifiable disease
epidemics?
Professor Sir David King: I do
not have a strong comment to make on that. It reinforces the CVO's
position in policy but removes him from the operations area.
Professor Brownlie: Anybody who
is driving policy needs to have the best input of expertise into
allowing him to understand policy. I know there is a new document
out and they are talking about further independent scientific
panels. I would refer back to the foot and mouth panel that Sir
David put together. It was put together with experts from all
round the place. There were modellers; there were people from
Defra; there were people in the cattle industry; there were people
with scientific and vaccine interests. It was a very dynamic affair
and I hope that the expertise in the country—and it is quite
considerable—is pulled in to help make good policy.
Q215 Mr Lazarowicz: On the delivery
side, Defra is conducting a review of its relationship with the
local veterinary inspectors. To what extent do you think the current
SVS structures hamper the country's ability to deliver a reaction
to veterinary emergencies and to deal with routine tasks as well?
Professor Brownlie: As you are
fully aware, the LVIs are an extension of the SVS. They allow
further expertise or manpower into surveillance and into operational
matters. They are a life blood for some practices. I guess this
is what the review is. It is not giving sufficient continuity
and sufficient expertise that Defra might want in the future.
There is no career structure, as I see it, for livestock veterinarians
or LVIs to do further training for career progression. There is
a lot of opportunity that you see in the medical system that you
do not see in the veterinary system. Livestock veterinary services
need a lot of support and guidance to make them more expert and
more appropriate for future needs.
Q216 Mr Wiggin: Can we talk a little
bit about what mechanisms are in place to encourage partnerships
between farmers and vets and the public and private veterinary
sectors and what needs to be done to ensure that partnerships
are strong enough to deliver the government's surveillance strategy?
Professor Brownlie: I think this
is an exciting moment in the whole business of partnerships. Everybody
is talking about them and I hope at the end of the day the right
partnership comes out and that this is life long. It is quite
clear that some areas of the country have very considerable strength
in private practice. Defra have contracted their services and
would benefit strongly from this partnership. I was in the foot
and mouth outbreak and I was working in Cumbria, on the front
line with several other people who had experience of foot and
mouth. That partnership could have been much stronger. It could
have been better utilised and I would think that lessons have
been learned.
Q217 Mr Wiggin: In what way could
it have been stronger?
Professor Brownlie: Some of us
who had more experience were not utilised more effectively and
I think we have all learned a great deal from that time. I hope
the partnerships will see that we have expertise in many areas
of the country but not all, which is a problem. This could supplement
but it needs to be directed. It needs to be properly coordinated
and supported into Defra to make it a stronger force.
Q218 Mr Wiggin: To what extent should
the strategy concentrate on notifiable diseases?
Professor Brownlie: Notifiable
diseases have been the major responsibility and concern of Defra.
Foot and mouth is certainly one of their major responsibilities.
If we are going to have a strategy for animal health and welfare,
we have to include endemic disease. There are a lot of serious
endemic diseases that cause a great deal of problems. If you take
a national perspective, we are talking about UK productivity and
disease is an important issue here. It is cost effective to get
rid of or control disease for the national good and the veterinarians
must be in a position to do that.
Q219 Mr Wiggin: What you would agree
with is that farm surveillance is very important. I was going
to ask what appropriate mechanisms are in place to gather farm
level surveillance data and how could that information be shared
with vets?
Professor Brownlie: How could
it be improved, I think, because there is a lot of data that comes
in from farms that does not necessarily go through the SVS. A
lot of private practices have a great deal of information. If
you look at a specialist practice for pigs and chickens, there
is a huge amount of data there that I do not think enters into
the system. The veterinary schools have data that does not enter
into the system. There is a real opportunity of having much better
surveillance if we can incorporate that data. There is a cost
implication of that but there is an opportunity to have wider
surveillance than just what is arbitrarily put through the SVS
for inspection.
| 
