UK door left open to threat of serious livestock disease

UK agriculture is being exposed to considerable disease risk due to a crumbling biosecurity infrastructure, inadequate border controls, and a lack of state and private vets.

Giving evidence to the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Efra) committee on Tuesday (4 March), National Pig Association chief executive Lizzie Wilson told MPs the £208m announced by government for a new National Biosecurity Centre at Weybridge was “nowhere near enough”.

“It is our flagship, horizon-scanning centre for notifiable disease – if we’re talking about preparedness and prevention, then we absolutely don’t believe that the measures being taken (are enough),” she said. 

See also: Illegal meat seizures at Dover port surge 5,500%

Mrs Wilson went on to highlight the inadequate checks on both smuggled meat and commercial trade through Dover, which were “not fit for purpose”.

“That’s where we believe more resource should be channeled,” she said, pointing out that finding illegal meat was not a top Border Force priority.

“The persistent narrative is that there is no risk, it is all under control, yet it is constantly worrying for our producers who know that it is literally just across the water,” said Mrs Wilson.

Lack of vets

A lack of veterinary resource, in both the private and public sectors, was also highlighted by Derbyshire vet Sarah Tomlinson, who is also technical director of the TB Advisory Service.

She explained how, during the major avian influenza crisis of two years ago (when almost 200 incidents were recorded), vets had to be taken off work on blood testing for bovine TB, leading to longer movement restrictions for farmers and an increase in herd incidence levels.

Asked what would happen if there were multiple disease outbreaks (for example if foot-and-mouth disease arrived at the same time as avian influenza and bluetongue), Ms Tomlinson said that was something that “keeps me awake at night”.

“If bluetongue and foot-and-mouth came in, where are we going to get the people to deal with this?” she asked.

Chief executive of the British Poultry Council, Richard Griffiths, also had concerns about the lack of succession planning, which meant real expertise in disease control was being lost as scientists and vets retired.

“Reacting to a disease ahead of time and building the defenses comes down to people,” he said.

“The ability to make decisions quickly and in a time of crisis is immensely important and one that we see at risk because we’re losing skills and we’re losing people.”

Underinvestment 

The Efra committee also quizzed the UK chief vet Christine Middlemiss and the interim chief executive of Apha, Jenny Stewart.

Ms Stewart referred to the “significant underinvestment in our high end, world leading infrastructure at Weybridge and across our regional network of laboratories”.

Having said that, she insisted the Apha still had the capacity to respond to different sizes of outbreaks in different combinations, pointing to the major avian influenza outbreak two years ago, when maximum capacity in lab usage was never reached.

But there was “limited capacity” at the very high end of containment to deal with the most dangerous pathogens.

Prof Middlemiss acknowledged the resource issue and pointed to the national shortage of vets.

“It is no secret that, in government, we feel that shortage particularly, therefore the ongoing turnover of veterinary supply and having the ability to resource other disease threats that we are not immediately dealing with is an ongoing pressure for us.”

Prof Middlemiss also pointed to the inequality of pay scales between the public and private veterinary sectors, which made it harder for the state sector to attract and retain vets.