Disease control must be based on prevention

“Meet your own responsibilities on preventing animal diseases before trying to foist the costs of controlling disease outbreaks onto the livestock industry,” is the call NFU Cymru has today made on Government.

NFU Cymru has today met with Stewart Houston, joint chair of the Joint Industry Government Working Group (JIGWG) as well as the Chief Veterinary Officer for Wales to discuss the sharing of responsibilities and costs associated with exotic diseases.

The JIGWG report was commissioned by Defra to look at what arrangements for cost and responsibility sharing would be appropriate in England for tackling exotic animal diseases. It has become clear from today’s meetings however, that the intention is for this approach to similarly apply to the whole of Great Britain, which would be regarded as a single epidemiological unit and possibly the UK.

Dai Davies, President of NFU Cymru said, “Whilst clearly the industry had a shared agenda, stopping the incursion of disease was the responsibility of Government and it has to face up to, and be accountable for, stopping the import of non indigenous diseases in the first place.

“The industry has already played its part in exercising strict bio-security and bearing the additional costs associated with this in management terms. The emphasis of the report needed to be firmly on preventing the introduction of disease in the first instance. The measures already being exercised by the industry would limit its spread.

“There was no evidence that the UK Government, compared to other countries, took its responsibilities seriously and lax import controls remain a real source of concern to the industry.”

Mr Davies added, “The Government is talking about partnership and cost-sharing. In Wales, the industry’s confidence in partnership has been completely shattered by the Welsh Assembly Government’s continuing failure to address TB other than in the cattle population. This so- called partnership has been totally one-sided, with the cattle industry meeting the significant consequential losses arising from the Welsh Assembly Government’s unremitting failure to deal with the disease holistically.

“Any meaningful disease control policy has to be based on prevention rather than cure and exercising effective import controls lays firmly at the prerogative of Government.”