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Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathy Regulations

I congratulate the hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr. Harper) on securing the debate and I commend him for the diligence that he has shown in getting to grips with what is a quite complex and technical issue. I am grateful to him for accepting the importance of our BSE controls, which I shall come to in a moment. On a personal level, I sympathise strongly with him and his constituents: Harriet is obviously a much loved pet. However, as he himself recognised, it is very important, not only for public health but for our beef industry, that our BSE controls are followed rigorously. You will recall, Mr. Martlew, that variant CJD is a terrible disease that has already cost the lives of more than 150 people in this country. That is why we have stringent BSE controls and why they must be enforced. The economic effects of BSE were also devastating for our livestock industry, for the beef industry in particular and for the taxpayer. In 1995, we exported £500 million-worth of beef. Until the present Government succeeded in persuading the EU to lift the export ban in May this year, the British beef industry had suffered 10 years of lost exports. Lifting the export ban has been a slow, painstaking process and has been achieved by demonstrating to the European Commission, to other EU member states and to our own independent Food Standards Agency that our BSE controls are effective and are being applied rigorously. Of course, the economic effects have not been confined to exports. Until last November, we had an over-30-months rule, which kept older cattle out of the food chain. As a result, the Government had to establish in 1996 an over-30-months slaughter scheme to dispose of the many thousands of cattle that could not enter the food chain. Under that scheme, more than 8 million cattle were incinerated at a cost to the taxpayer of £3.9 billion. Once again, it was the strict application of our BSE controls that enabled us to replace the over-30-months rule with a robust system of BSE testing for cattle born after July 1996. Instead of an expensive OTM scheme, we now have a much cheaper and more limited cohort cull and the older cattle disposal scheme, under which cattle born before August 1996 are destroyed. That is better for farmers and for the taxpayer. Hon. Members should not have any doubt that cohort cattle are at higher risk of developing BSE. We are not just blindly following rules that make no sense. Cohort cattle are those that might have consumed the same feed as a BSE case during the first year of their lives, and feed contaminated with the BSE agent is the most important source of BSE infection for cattle. Experts believe that the majority of BSE cases were infected during the first year of their lives. BSE was confirmed in six cohort animals culled last year. That is a confirmation rate of 0.2 per cent. In comparison, the confirmation rate in 2005 for normal healthy cattle born after July 1996 was only 0.0007 per cent. That is why EU legislation requires all member states to kill cohorts as soon as possible. We began the cohort cull in March 2005 in preparation for the replacement of the over-30-months rule. By carrying out the cull, we removed from the national herd all those cattle known to be at a higher risk of being infected with BSE. That is important. Consumer representatives in this country and on the continent have made it clear to us that they do not want there to be any chance of those cattle entering the food chain. To date, we have culled more than 3,500 cohort cattle, some of which have been pets. Other than for animals kept for the purposes of bona fide research projects on approved premises, there are only two exceptions to the legal requirement to cull cohort cattle. Those are if the animal is a breeding bull at an artificial insemination centre or if there is evidence that the animal did not consume the same feed as the BSE case. Harriet is manifestly not a bull, and in the past her owner has agreed that she shared feed with the BSE case with which she is linked. As the hon. Member for Forest of Dean said, the owner has subsequently submitted further information that, it is claimed, shows that the animal did not in fact share the same feed as the BSE case. I will of course examine that evidence in detail before any final decision is reached. Let me deal with a couple of the other arguments that the hon. Gentleman and campaigners involved in this case have suggested as reasons why Harriet should not be culled. We are told that she is a pet and therefore the legislation does not apply to her. I have to tell the hon. Gentleman that there is no exemption for pet cattle under the law.