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Agriculture: Foot and Mouth

Answer

Defra provided grants to the Institute for Animal Health (IAH) Pirbright. These grants funded a series of projects relating to the development of diagnostic technologies for FMD.

2001-02	2002-03	2003-04	2004-05	2005-06
£99,835	£245,558	£304,748	£321,045	£319,163

2006-07	2007-08	2008-09	2009-10	2010-11
£311,427	£317,280	£328,267	£415,058	£446,094

The IAH estimate that an average of 20-25 per cent of the total was related to specific research into pen-side test kits. Further core strategic funding was provided by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council to the IAH to complement FMD research grants. Part of this funding was allocated for the rapid, pen-side FMDv detector kit and is listed below:

2005-06	2006-07	2007-08
£3,900	£17,800	£2,900

Pen-side tests are not currently used as a conclusive diagnostic tool in GB, as the current technology and equipment does not support the determination of negative results in all circumstances. Therefore any samples taken from suspect animals will always need to be submitted for testing at the National Reference Laboratory for FMD, which is IAH Pirbright. The potential benefits of using pen-side tests in the future will be kept under review as the technology advances. There is currently one lateral flow device commercially available, this device was trialled successfully on one farm during the 2007 UK FMD outbreak, in conjunction with tests carried out at IAH, to diagnose FMD.

Secondary information

Type

Written question

Reference

13261; 732 c219-20WA

Session

2010-12

Related items

Agriculture: Food and Mouth
Wednesday, 7 December 2011
Written questions
House of Lords

Subjects

Finance Foot and mouth disease Research Testing

Contains statistics

Yes

Link

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