DEFRA's cost sharing bulldozer pushes on

The Tenant Farmers Association has criticised DEFRA for publishing a draft bill on the establishment of an independent animal health body when the working group it established to advise it on how such a body should be created is still many months away from delivering its report.

TFA National Chairman Greg Bliss said "This is not the first time that the Government has jumped the gun in this area of policy. On the very last day of the period for responses to the initial consultation document on whether it was appropriate to establish an independent body, and before anyone would have had the chance to consider any of the responses received, Hilary Benn announced the establishment of the working party under the chairmanship of Rosemary Radcliffe to advise it on how best to establish the body. Now the Government appears to be trying to second-guess what the working group will propose when it is still in the very early stages of its deliberations".

"DEFRA is displaying a certain unholy haste to, in the words of the Secretary of State, ’improve the delivery of animal health’ in comparison to it’s foot dragging on the biggest animal health issue facing the agricultural industry - bovine TB. If the Government put as much effort into dealing with bovine TB as it has into pushing ahead for its plans for an independent animal health body I am sure that we would be much closer to achieving complete eradication of the disease from these shores," said Mr Bliss.

"The fact is that this is not about animal health delivery but about the Government’s desire to pass Exchequer costs onto the industry and I simply cannot see how an independent body will improve the delivery of animal health policy. It would not have stopped the 2001 outbreak of foot and mouth disease which was caused by infected imports, or the 2007 outbreak which was caused by a leak from a government laboratory and it will do little to improve the bovine TB situation which requires an urgent cull of infected wildlife which the government sees as a welfare issue - an area of policy which it is not planning to pass to any future independent body in any case," said Mr Bliss.

"The DEFRA bulldozer is rolling along hoping to push aside any opposition it encounters along the way. However, the TFA has great respect for the strength and tenacity of Rosemary Radcliffe and we will continue to work with her and her working group to ensure that the DEFRA view is not a foregone conclusion" said Mr Bliss.