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Animal Health Act 1981 (Amendment) Regulations 2005

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for giving me the opportunity to come back on this matter. There is a very good list of the criteria that are used in building up a picture of infected premises which includes taking samples and sending them off for testing. One of the problems that we had in the last foot and mouth disease outbreak was that there was a delay between the samples being sent off and the results coming back. We would like to know that that delay is minimised under the current arrangements. There may be a question about whether the early results from a test would trigger stock movement or whether one has to wait until one has the full results of all the tests.