Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20-39)
DEFRA AND NFU
23 FEBRUARY 2005
Q20 Mrs Browning: Could you just
refamiliarise yourself with paragraph 2.3 which sets out the genesis
of the lamb imported from Argentina coming in and its inclusion
in pigswill. It says here ". . . the failure of a farmer
to heat-treat the swill to inactivate the virus. The feeding of
swill to pigs was rare in 2001 and since May 2001 has been banned.
Farms are subject to a range of inspections both by the Department
and local authorities." Sir Brian, are you aware that Bobby
Waugh, whose farm was identified as the index case for Foot and
Mouth in 2001, was contravening Article 21(2) of the Animal Byproducts
Order 1999 at Burnside Farm?
Sir Brian Bender: I am conscious
that there were issues around what was going on on his farm and,
indeed, there were periodic visits and inspections of his farm.
The most recent inspection, which was in January 2001, happened
to be before we believe there was any virus present but I do not
think that was your question. The question was whether presumably
there was anything that should have been done at the time of that
or previous visits.
Q21 Mrs Browning: Yes?
Sir Brian Bender: Hindsight is
a wonderful thing. I do not know whether the Chief Vet would like
to comment on this?
Dr Reynolds: Only to say that
hindsight is a wonderful thing and risk assessment by the Veterinary
Laboratories Agency does show a great deal of uncertainty on the
potential for both illegal imports of meat and particularly around
those which might be infected. That is why stopping the swill
feeding route of exposure to pigs which could get the virus so
seriously, was a very important step that was taken during 2001.
Q22 Mrs Browning: It was not just
as it says here, and as I have seen reported elsewhere, the feeding
of this unprocessed swill to pigs, it was the very fact that under
your Ministry's own Article 21(2) of the Animal Byproducts Order,
it was not just a question of feeding, it was a matter of having
unprocessed waste on the premises at all where pigs and other
ruminants are kept.
Sir Brian Bender: There are plainly
issues about how effectively, first of all, farmers who have a
responsibility themselves, obey the law and, secondly, how effectively
our risk based inspection arrangements are. We believe they are
better now as a result of various bits of data but undoubtedly
in a perfect world this would not have happened because the issues
would have been spotted.
Q23 Mrs Browning: Are you aware that
the State Veterinary Officer, Jim Dring, made a signed submission
to Anderson's Lessons Learned Inquiry in which he admits that
he was aware that Mr Bobbie Waugh was bringing unprocessed catering
waste on to Burnside Farm prior to the outbreak of Foot and Mouth
Disease in 2001?
Sir Brian Bender: I am very aware
of Jim Dring's statement. It was not a submission to the Anderson
Inquiry but he did produce a personal statement. In fact, there
has been some discussion with Dr Anderson because Dr Anderson
did not see that at the time. Nonetheless, Jim Dring did make
such a statement and again he was applying, if you like, personal
hindsight to the situation. Obviously what happened is regrettable.
In a perfect world perhaps this issue would have been spotted
and a disease outbreak would not have happened. The question is
how we can learn the lessons from that for our inspection arrangements
which are shared between the State Veterinary Service and local
authorities to try and stop that happening in future.
Q24 Mrs Browning: It would have been
a requirement to inspect every six months to renew an Article
26 licence on Burnside Farm?
Sir Brian Bender: Yes.
Mr Hewitt: For feeders of swill
it was a six month inspection.
Q25 Mrs Browning: Yes. What I would
ask you then is do you accept now that Jim Dring failed to fulfil
his regulatory duties under the Animal Byproducts Order 1999 by
allowing Bobby Waugh not just to feed the unprocessed swill to
his pigs but by bringing unprocessed catering waste on to Burnside
Farm at all?
Sir Brian Bender: I am very happy
to provide the Committee with a note on that. I have not come
prepared with sufficient information, to be fair either to Mrs
Browning asking the question or, indeed, to Mr Dring in the way
I respond to it. I am very happy to provide the Committee with
a note afterwards. I apologise for not being able to answer it
now.[1]
Q26 Mrs Browning: If you are unable to
answer it now and you write to us, would you take a look also
at whether you think it was down to Mr Dring personally, who clearly
made that written statement to the Anderson Inquiry? I am very
focused on this Byproducts Order because it is not just, as people
tend to talk about, feeding to pigs, it is the actual presence
of catering waste on the farm at all which was in contravention
of the Order. I would ask you whether you accept that there was
negligence within the management structure of the State Veterinary
Service which allowed Mr Dring's work to go unmonitored?
Sir Brian Bender: I understand
the question, I will cover this in the note.
Q27 Mrs Browning: Will you let us
know whether you accept that the SVS accept responsibility for
Mr Dring's actions?
Sir Brian Bender: I will cover
that. The SVS then and now certainly would accept responsibility.
That is the role of managers.
Q28 Mrs Browning: That will be clear
in your written note?
Sir Brian Bender: I will cover
this point and look carefully at the transcript.
Q29 Mrs Browning: The reason I am
very focused on this—you will be aware that there have been
many parliamentary questions, of which I myself have put down
questions and correspondence with ministers on this—it comes
back to the question I asked you originally whether you felt DEFRA
could have prevented this. Yes, we are talking about lessons learned,
and I come back to that paragraph 2.3 at the beginning of this
where it states ". . . The feeding of swill to pigs was rare
in 2001 . . .". That may well be the case but it was not
just the feeding of swill, it was the presence of that catering
waste in contravention of a DEFRA regulation. What I am really
asking you is if DEFRA had managed to uphold its own regulations
could they have prevented the Foot and Mouth outbreak occurring?
Sir Brian Bender: Again, I will
cover this in the note. My view is in a perfect world that may
have been the case. The question looking forward is whether through
a combination of the work we are doing on biosecurity, on targeted
risk of enforcement and on farm health plans, we will minimise
these risks in the future because one can never reduce them to
zero, we do not live in that sort of perfect world.
Mrs Browning: It may not be a perfect
world, Sir Brian, but personally I sat through a two year public
inquiry and I have to tell you nobody ever prayed in aid "it
is not a perfect world" when they investigated BSE. I hope
you will take that on board when you make your written submission
to the Chairman. Thank you.
Q30 Mr Curry: Sir Brian, if there
was to be an outbreak of Foot and Mouth Disease in the Pennine
Dales of Yorkshire, who would be put in charge of dealing with
it?
Sir Brian Bender: From day one
we would establish a Regional Operations Director in the local
Disease Control Centre to whom, for administration and management
purposes, the local veterinary service would work. The veterinary
judgments would not be overseen but the operations would be. We
would bring in also a military liaison officer on day one into
the local disease centre to work with the civilians and liaise
with the MoD as to whether or not it was appropriate to bring
in the army.
Q31 Mr Curry: Who is the person who
would do that job?
Sir Brian Bender: We have a list
of volunteer Regional Operations Directors, members of the Senior
Civil Service, who receive a certain period of training each year
and who would step in. Two or three of them did that role in the
exercise last summer.
Q32 Mr Curry: Where is the regional
centre they would operate from in this case?
Sir Brian Bender: Probably Leeds.
You will recall, probably even better than I, in the 2001 outbreak
we opened, in effect, a sub-office because of the geography when
the outbreak happened.
Q33 Mr Curry: The reason I ask the
question is that in the last outbreak one had the impression that
nobody was in charge, and certainly nobody was in charge of the
vets. The vets were not within the overall management structure.
You had Antipodean vets racing around North Yorkshire on a variety
of missions. You had nobody in charge of the overall management.
One of the things which struck me forcibly afterwards was the
State Veterinary Service simply had to be brought under the overall
management control of the Department, they could not be allowed
to function like a semi-autonomous organisation. Are you satisfied
that the vets are now under control, as it were?
Sir Brian Bender: They are under
control directly of a lawyer. That is not an entirely facetious
response. The Chief Executive Designate, who is the senior leader
and manager of vets is, in fact, a lawyer by training not a vet.
My more serious answer to the question is that the various changes
that we made during Foot and Mouth last time but would apply from
day one next time would be intended to have an integrated management
structure. We did not put the Regional Operations Directors in
place until several weeks into the outbreak.
Q34 Mr Curry: You ended up with an
effective system and high quality people in charge. A lot had
got by before that happened. One of the things which got by was
the great difficulty of making contact. You had various phone
numbers for emergencies which never, ever were answered, no-one
could ever get through. What measures have you put in place to
make sure that communication between the direct and regional centre
is always accessible?
Ms Stacey: There is a communication
strategy now.
Q35 Mr Curry: Not depending on websites,
please. Farmers in my constituency do not always have them.
Ms Stacey: There is a communication
strategy set out as part of the national contingency plan for
managing Foot and Mouth Disease and other such diseases. It requires
at a local level daily engagement with stakeholders, for example,
so you have daily meetings where the up-to-the-minute picture
is exchanged. There are also now 24 hour phone numbers to contact
which are local phone numbers. It should be possible for us to
manage both phone and direct stakeholder communication on a daily
basis.
Q36 Mr Curry: One of the things which
struck me during the last outbreak was that the regional directors
when they were in place obviously had to be exposed to the media
but they were, by definition, being exposed to a great deal of
what you might call political questioning. They were required
to answer questions which really should be directed towards their
political masters. How does one deal with this topic?
Sir Brian Bender: I do not think
there is a simple answer because I think the senior official on
the spot, who would be a Regional Operations Director, will need
to deal with local stakeholders, as Glenys Stacey said, and different
media and, therefore, will need to learn how to handle as a civil
servant the difficult questions, as indeed the Chief Vet did last
time.
Q37 Mr Curry: Are they getting trained
in that?
Sir Brian Bender: Yes.
Q38 Mr Curry: Are you doing war games
with them?
Sir Brian Bender: They are having
that sort of media training and, indeed, some of the state vets
had last time apparently.
Q39 Mr Curry: Could we move on to
the welfare culling. The most profligate area of public expenditure
was probably the welfare cull because anything with four legs
which was capable of showing signs of a heartbeat then did receive
a vast amount of compensation payment without question from a
terribly overwhelmed Newcastle office, speaking from personal
experience. You have gone now from the position where in practice
things were signed off really without question to saying you are
not going to pay compensation at all, you are going to rely on
other mechanisms. Do you think that is a fair balance to have
arrived at and how confident are you the other mechanisms will
work given that, as you have admitted and we all accept, the urgency
last time was to get farmer co-operation pretty damn quick at
almost whatever price?
Sir Brian Bender: We believe,
as it were, as part of the overall more rapid response, a more
effective response is in place and, as you know, the policy is
that the cost of disposal should be paid for by the taxpayer,
but not any compensation for the cost of the lost livestock. All
this is against the background that it is the farmers' responsibility
fundamentally to look after their animals and feed them.
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