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Farms: Inspections

Answer

The information requested is as follows:Rural Payments AgencyThe RPA Inspectorate conducted the following inspections in each of the last five years:

Year¹	Number of inspections
2004-05	11,779
2005-06	11,951
2006-07	13,869
2007-08	14,457
2008-09	14,461
¹ RPA Inspections are detailed by financial year, therefore the table refers to inspections made from 1 April to 31 March in each year.

In addition our Horticultural Marketing Inspectors, who merged with the RPA Inspectorate on 1 April 2006, carried out the following inspections at the premises of glasshouse growers, market gardeners etc:

Year¹	Number of inspections
2006-07	1,364
2007-08	1,230
2008-09	1,170
¹ RPA HMI Inspections are detailed by financial year, as above.

Animal Health

Year	TB	Welfare
2005	82,272	3,421
2006	115,868	3,860
2007	132,806	4,003
2008	136,877	4,143
2009	105,760	2,947
Notes:
1. 2009 data cover the period 1 January to 30 September 2009.
2. TB inspections include all tests carried out by AH Staff and OV's.

Figures for Veterinary Medicines Visit Management System for medicines farm visits, including revisits, are:

	Visits
2008	2,683
Financial year 2008-09	2,682
2009 to date	1,972

There would also be many other farm visits carried out e.g. animal by-products visits, disease surveillance for salmonella, sheep surveys, avian influenza surveys etc. There are also visits carried out by Egg Marketing Inspectorate and Dairy Hygiene Inspectorate. We have been unable to provide details of these due to disproportionate cost.Veterinary Medicine DirectorateVMD's contribution to this reply based on calendar years is as follows:

	Number
2004
Routine/scheduled	548
Follow up/special	39
Total	587
2005
Routine/scheduled	635
Follow up/special	51
Total	686
2006
Routine/scheduled	509
Follow up/special	26
Total	535
2007
Routine/scheduled	279
Follow up/special	19
Fish farms	82
Total	380
2008
Routine/scheduled	273
Follow up/special	20
Fish farms	24
Total	317
Note:
Inspection of fish farms mixing medicated feeds began in 2006, but inspection of such premises were not separately identified.

Environment AgencyThe following table shows the number of single regime, integrated and cross-compliance inspections that have been undertaken by the Environment Agency in the last five years.

	Number of visits
2004-05	6,504
2005-06	5,835
2006-07	5,767
2007-08	6,768
2008-09	5,787
Source:
EA Operations Performance Data (2004-05 to 2008-09)

The Food and Environment Research AgencyThe Food and Environment Research Agency's Plant Health and Seeds Inspectorate carry out technical inspections of crops and commodities on farms. These are inherently different to the inspections undertaken by other agencies. The figures for the last five years are as follows:"2005: 6,570 inspections at 2,116 visits to 734 farms""2006: 12,223 inspections at 6,653 visits to 1,865 farms""2007: 11,337 inspections at 6,099 visits to 1,609 farms""2008: 12,218 inspections at 6,398 visits to 1,523 farms""2009 (to date): 9,419 inspections at 4,762 visits to 1,439 farms."The National Bee Unit's Bee Inspectors carry out inspections of apiaries for statutory bee diseases. The figures for these inspections are as follows:"2005: 4,035""2006: 4,034""2007: 4,488""2008: 4,422""2009: 7,318 (to date)"However, it is not possible to distinguish how many of these were to bee farmers or to amateur beekeepers (approx. 99 per cent. of beekeepers are amateurs).GM audits (seed) do not take place on farms. GM trial inspections are focused on the trial itself only, and very often take place on research institutes, etc and therefore these figures are not included.

Secondary information

Type

Written question

Reference

497 c1004-6W; 291905

Session

2008-09

Subjects

Inspections Farms

Contains statistics

Yes

Link

View this Written question on www.publications.parliament.uk