November 6 2008 ~ Cost-sharing ".... they have taken their bat home because they do not think you have played fair with them on bovine TB.."
EFRA Committee oral evidence is always interesting (even if only to be staggered by the extraordinary English employed by some Defra officials) On 29th October, Helen Ghosh was asked, among many other things, about cost sharing. As Paddy Tipping's question (85) acknowledged, the NFU represents only some of those who may find themselves paying an unaccountable piper. As to the NFU's having taken their bat home, Dame Helen said, "they are still playing with us on an awful lot of other fields, actually, yes..." She also, with rather less than perfect clarity, informed the EFRA Committee,
" we have never intended to have a cost-sharing bill in this session. We had one consultation on the cost-sharing proposals and the idea of the creation of a joint body to bring that to life. We are currently looking at the policy and talking to stakeholders and will come forward with a more detailed proposition for consultation, and then we would move to a draft bill. So a draft bill would not happen until - I am getting my sessions muddled up. It would be, I think, the next session, not the one that is about to start but 2009-10 and then subject to discussions on that a full bill thereafter. So setting up the body is something on which we have had preliminary consultation, we will have some more, and then we will move to a draft bill."
November 4 2008 ~ "The NFU has confirmed that it is not engaged in any discussions with DEFRA on livestock disease cost and responsibility sharing"
FWi "This follows an announcement yesterday (3 November) that the NFU, along with other livestock organisations, will help set up a new Bovine TB Eradication Group." (see TB page latest)
A Parliamentary Question from Roger Williams yesterday: To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what assessment he has made of the effect of cost and responsibility sharing for animal disease on the effectiveness and profitability of British farming" received this from Jane Kennedy"The Government intend to consult on specific proposals for sharing responsibilities and costs for animal health in England later this year. These proposals will be fully costed and accompanied by an initial impact assessment."
August 14 2008 ~ farmers to pay a headage fee in return for "possibly" an independent body on Animal Health policy
It looks as though livestock farmers in England are going to be forced to pay a fee for every animal they produce. The plan is part of the government's cost sharing scheme about which we have commented several times.
The money collected would fund a new animal health body. There are apparently two options - the first is to create a department like the Food Standards Agency, considered to be independent and without a Minister. The other is for a public body, "along the lines of the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board" funded through Defra and answerable to Defra Ministers.
Although the consultation will discuss"how much independence it will be granted from Ministers... and how it responds to major disease outbreaks"
the "newness" and "independence" may not satisfy the call for an independent body to take on the future decision making for animal health made last month in an eight-point statement of agreement by an industry stakeholder group.
A Defra spokesman quoted in the Farmers Guardian article made it clear that the new body would not be built from scratch but instead be made up from Animal Health, (i.e.the SVS) and parts of DEFRA itself. The reins of control, once grasped, are never lightly given up - but a strand of accountability, such as suggested here in Dr Roger Breeze's paper, Industry Cost Sharing, must surely be an essential part of any scheme..July 23 2008 ~ Non-participation in cost-sharing. Non participation on "TB Partnership". New call for a truly independent body on Animal Health matters
An indication - if any were needed- of how far the gulf has widened between farmers and the government can be seen in this NFU release which reports that an "... industry stakeholder group has put its name to an eight-point statement of agreement following the non-decision announced by the Secretary of State, Hilary Benn, on dealing with bTB......Included in the eight points is a call for an independent body to take on the future decision making for animal health; a commitment of non-participation in the TB Partnership Group as announced by the Secretary of State; and an industry policy of non-participation in discussions on cost sharing and responsibility on animal health and welfare issues.."
Click here for the 8 points of the industry wide stakeholder group - while today's EFRA report's main points can be seen hereJune 21 2008 ~ DEFRA won't help towards Surrey's £250,000 FMD bill.
The BBC reports that Surrey County Council said it was disappointed not to be reimbursed for the hard work put in to stop the spread of the disease. DEFRA retorted that local authorities already had funding for emergencies - forgetting perhaps that six months ago, government funding to local authorities for animal health and welfare was cut by about 12%. DEFRA:
"... Where local authorities act during an emergency, they do so on their own responsibility rather than on the instructions of Defra."
So there we are. It all comes down to responsibility. The leak from Pirbright was not the government's responsibility, urgent funding for Pirbright (see below) was not their responsibility and the huge bill caused by Pirbright's poor state was not the government's responsibility. But what was the government's responsibility was making all the decisions, refusing to vaccinate and turning its deaf ear to expert advice. For the government, "responsibility" means that the costs of their own policies and muddled responses are met by others. Despite the endless stream of regulations making farmers and managers ever more accountable, DEFRA and the government are not, it seems, ever to be held responsible themselves. (This paper shows what would be a saner approach to industry cost sharing and governmental responsibility.)June 2 2008 ~ "...regular contact with stakeholders, and being as open as possible about current and future policy-making, has contributed to creating a climate of trust" CVO report 2007 (page 21)
The pdf file Animal Health 2007 The Report of the Chief Veterinary Officer has quietly arrived on the DEFRA website today. Topics covered in the 2007 report include bovine TB ("Defra aims to work in partnership with interested organisations to bring about a sustainable improvement in control of the disease by 2015...") the outbreaks of Foot and Mouth Disease ("A great deal has been done since 2001 on building relationships with a wide range of non-governmental organisations...".) Avian Flu ("Defra's contingency plan was implemented effectively to control the outbreak...") and Bluetongue ("..there is a real concern that the disease will become more widespread and enter Wales..") and progress on the UK's Responsibility and Cost Sharing Programme ("Significant progress has been made in 2007 to take the responsibility and cost sharing agenda forward...")
"a challenging year due to the combined impact of Avian Influenza, Bluetongue and Foot and Mouth Disease," says the Foreward, signed by Fred Landeg. In the sole reference to her in the report, he expresses gratitude to " in particular, our former Chief Veterinary Officer, Dr Debby Reynolds." (Link to pdf report)May 28 2008 ~ Surrey County Council will prosecute neither IAH Pirbright nor Merial over FMD leak last August
The Telegraph reported this afternoon that Surrey CC has "called for tougher measures which would ensure that where two laboratories shared facilities, one should have ultimate responsibility and accountability for the site....."
So once again, as in Albert and the Lion, "no one was really to blame..." Unless, of course, one remembers the pleas from Pirbright to DEFRA and to the Treasury that were ignored. They were alerted to the desperate lack of funding long before the virus leak - as the memorandum at the end of the Science and Technology Committee's 4th report volume 2) makes clear. Although the Department was able to find a total of £418 million to pay the EU fine for the RPA delays, in 2006 it could not find the resources to keep its own dangerous house in order when it mattered - and now washes its hands of the financial fallout from the leaked virus. Interestingly, the Welsh NFU president, Dai Davies, is quoted today (:www.dailypost.co.uk)"The whole issue of responsibility and cost sharing must be viewed against the government's continued refusal to accept their responsibility for the release of the FMD virus from the Pirbright facility."
Country Land & Business Association deputy president William Worsley is quoted on farming uk: "This is extremely worrying .... will set a dangerous precedent for similar situations caused by the negligence of public bodies. It suggests public bodies are not subject to the same level of accountability as everyone else. This is despite a seemingly endless stream of regulations affecting rural businesses that makes managers ever more accountable for their actions."February 5 2008 ~ "...animal disease crises, plus the flooding, cost Defra £65m in unplanned spending last year."
Animal disease needs planned spending - and lots of it, unfortunately. The campaign against Bluetongue, for example - a disease of which the majority of the population has never heard but one which could wipe out our livestock farming - is in desperate and urgent need of informed and properly funded organisation. At a time when the global economic situation is fragile we really must reconsider the local availability of safe food and cherish our livestock farmers. Demanding that sheep farmers, hit by a succession of hardships, now pour money into a fund that has no safeguards is suicidally ill thought out. (Whereas this paper on cost sharing suggests an acceptable way forward.)
Those holding the Treasury purse strings must surely face some stark realities. We have every sympathy for those who must try to make sense of the muddle while still protecting the country from harm.January 4th 2008 ~ "Vigilance" plea repeated yet again
Fred Landeg's repeated mantra of "vigilance" in his plea to farmers to "learn the lessons of 2007" might be considered somewhat worse than tactless in the circumstances when so many farmers are reeling from the Pirbright virus leak and the disastrously far-reaching effects of the attempts to cope with it. A campaign to push for full compensation may rumble on for months.
Meanwhile, Hilary Benn's speech at the Oxford Farming Conference, according to the Farmers Guardian, "contained little new in terms of ideas or policy." It did, however, show a government pressing on against all the odds to insist on cost sharing.
Paper by Dr. Roger Breeze, CEO, Centaur Science Group (formerly, Associate Administrator, United States Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service), Washington DC.
Industry Cost Sharing
In the US, the Golden Rule is that he who has the gold makes the rules. That the British government is now looking to the livestock industry to share the costs of epidemic disease control is a welcome change, because when the government had all the gold and set all the rules, the results were demonstrably not to anyone's liking. Cost sharing offers industry a chance to sit at the table as a partner to make sure that when it pays what is asked, it gets what is promised. In this context, I use "industry" to mean those concerned with the raising, processing and sale of livestock and poultry from farm to fork in the UK, including all zoo and commercial animals and birds (from which commerce or profit is derived) regardless of species. There are other private sector industries that I will identify later in the narrative.
To be a partner in a real negotiation, the industry has to know what it wants so that proposals from the government can be assessed in terms of how well they advance or retard what industry wants to see as the outcomes. Industry cannot negotiate meaningfully if its "negotiation" comments are only responses to proposals and goals of the government.
The following comments are directed at all foreign animal and poultry disease emergencies but particularly for foot and mouth - one cannot detail all possibilities here.
Industry desires might be as follows:
1. FMD does not occur in the UK or the EU.
2. The only way FMD virus can become a livestock problem in the UK is if someone accidentally or deliberately brings the virus, live infected animals or infected animal products into the UK.
3. The industry has no powers to prevent accidental or deliberate FMD introduction - this is an essentially governmental function. The industry recognizes that a portion of the costs of keeping FMD and other infections out of the UK should be borne by those passing across the country's borders or importing animals or goods that might carry these infections.
i. Plans should be developed for effective screening of persons, conveyances (cars, trucks, boats, planes) and goods of all kinds arriving in the UK to ensure that illegal imports of animals and animal products that might carry foreign pathogens of concern are detected.
ii. Performance Benchmarks should be established - what proportions of passengers, conveyances and goods will be examined, how they will be examined and how results will be reported. When possible, robotic automated devices should be employed to screen the maximum numbers of potential targets.
iii. Industry accepts that it is not possible to examine all travelers, goods or conveyances and will agree with government what an acceptable fraction should be. Later, there might be redirection of inspection resources based upon risk assessment and experience. A case can be made to inspect a greater proportion of travelers, containers and goods coming from countries in which FMD and other diseases of concern are known to be present than from disease-free countries, thereby encouraging countries to eradicate disease within their borders.
iv. A fee should be assessed on all travelers, conveyances, shipping containers and goods entering UK to pay for an agreed share of the increased costs of inspection. This fee would be greater for conveyances carrying live animals or animal products and for imports of live animals and animal products - but inspection should not be restricted only to these since the declared manifest might be incorrect. Reduced fees might apply to those meeting higher standards of validation as to the nature of the import and country of origin. ALL sector components should contribute - the shipping companies as well as the shipper - to ensure that all are vested in the outcome. There should be real and significant penalties on the boat, truck or airline industry members found to be carrying illegal imports to discourage illegal imports at the point of loading in a foreign country.
v. On a non-disclosure basis, the government should make available to industry representatives the records on how well Performance Benchmarks are being met - the government should have the necessary resources to meet these benchmarks from tax revenues and user fees and be prepared to demonstrate that it is meeting its Performance promises.
vi. Laws and regulations on penalties for failing to comply with importation requirements should be reviewed to ensure that penalties are commensurate with the likely degree of economic consequence.
vii. Through differential fees, the government should encourage adoption of importation practices that minimize fraud and maximize effective inspection, such as source validation, unalterable product seals, electronically verifiable certificates of origin, and lifetime tracking of the imported products in ways that can be validated in real time by the customs inspector at the point of importation.
viii. The purpose of the above program component is to ensure that all those engaged in entering the UK, with and without products or animals that might carry infection, contribute towards the costs of an effective program with measurable impact on preventing illegal importations.
ix. The above comments do not address deliberate introduction (see below).
4. Government has chosen to retain all powers to diagnose FMD and to respond to an introduction by vaccination and other health interventions and by release of vaccine to livestock owners. The industry is willing to share the costs of an agreed and effective diagnostic and response system in which government meets agreed Performance Benchmarks that will limit industry losses should FMD occur. By "livestock" below I also intend zoo, game and other non-farm animals and birds.
a. Early reporting of suspicious cases is critical to limiting any subsequent epidemic. Through education and training, the government should ensure that livestock owners and those employed in the industry know what to look out for and how to report suspicious cases. An inducement scheme might be adopted to encourage reporting. This component should have Performance Benchmarks.
b. Within 6 hours of notification by a veterinary surgeon of a suspicious case, government should have made a definitive detection of the foreign animal disease by transporting samples to Pirbright or by examining samples in regional laboratories or on the farm. This component should have Performance Benchmarks.
c. In cooperation with the livestock industry and the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons, the government shall have in place an emergency communications capability to inform directly all UK livestock owners and veterinary surgeons or a defined subset of them immediately (within 1 hour) after a definitive diagnosis. This communication system might be by telephone or other electronic means. This component should have Performance Benchmarks.
d. Through education and training, the government shall ensure that all livestock owners and veterinary surgeons know what preventative measures they should employ under their farming circumstances when disease is diagnosed. This component should have Performance Benchmarks.
e. Within 24 hours, government should have determined the strain or subtype of the pathogen and ordered the production of the most efficacious vaccine from stockpiled antigens. This component should have Performance Benchmarks.
f. The government will maintain a stockpile of vaccines (in the form of frozen antigen of indefinite shelf life) to protect UK livestock against all strains of the pathogen circulating in the world. The numbers of doses of each vaccine may not be the same as the total number of susceptible animals or birds but the government shall fully compensate owners for whom vaccine is not available in the event of an outbreak.
g. The government will have a plan and capability to deliver sufficient vaccine for all susceptible livestock to their owners at pre-determined distribution points starting 72 hours after definitive diagnosis and being complete by 144 to 168 hours. This component should have Performance Benchmarks.
h. The government shall ensure that sufficient laboratory capability and capacity exist to perform all diagnostic and differential diagnostic tests during and after an outbreak in a timely manner.
i. All components of the livestock production and animal product processing industry and the retail sector should pay a share of the above costs not borne by government because all components benefit from animal agriculture - this includes auctions, retail stores and slaughter plants. The consumers' portion is paid by government tax revenues.
j. The purpose of the above program component is to ensure that all those benefiting from production, processing or sale of animals and animal products of UK origin and those similarly benefiting from imported animals or animal products contribute towards the costs of an effective program for earliest detection and most rapid effective response to foreign animal and poultry disease threats and are actively engaged in such a program should disease occur.
5. When a disease outbreak occurs during a period in which the government is not meeting its Performance Benchmarks for importation security, the industry shall not have to pay its share of disease control and compensation costs stemming from failure on the government's part.
6. When a disease outbreak occurs during a period in which the government is not meeting its Performance Benchmarks for diagnosis, vaccine deployment and preparedness, the industry shall not have to pay its share of disease control and compensation costs stemming from failure on the government's part.
7. Livestock owners will be compensated for the value of stock slaughtered in the period before vaccination has occurred and disease control measures are fully implemented - this might be as long as two weeks after definitive diagnosis. The first owner to report a suspicious case that proves to be an infection of concern shall be compensated at four times the value of the stock; those subsequently reporting suspicious cases that prove positive within the first two weeks after a definitive diagnosis shall be compensated at twice the value of the stock. Owners of stock deemed to be infected more than two weeks after definitive diagnosis shall not be compensated from government funds, although insurance against such an eventuality shall be offered in advance. This scheme is intended to promote industry-wide vigilance and immediate diligent attention and response after disease is diagnosed.
8. With all Performance Benchmarks met, by government and industry, the goal is to snuff out an outbreak in two weeks after diagnosis by active commitment of all sections of the industry and related industries.
9. The issue of who should pay what in the event of deliberate introduction of disease is difficult. Deliberate introduction will be either a crime or a terrorist attack - deterring and responding to either of these are inherently governmental functions. I have argued that changing the way government responds to FMD and other foreign infections can reduce or remove the terrorist threat since it is the drama and visual theater of mass slaughter and destruction that the terrorists seek to have shown on al Jazeera and BBC World News. This is why I assume vaccination above, not mass slaughter. I am not sure of UK law on insurance against terrorist attack - if terrorism causes damage, does the liability fall to government not the insurer? Who paid for the physical damage to the London Underground? Was it insurance or the government? Seems like a similar principle would hold for deliberate disease attack.
August 5, 2005
Roger Breeze,
CEO, Centaur Science Group (formerly, Associate Administrator, United States Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service), Washington DC.