Progress made in long battle to ensure resilience of UK sheep industry in future disease outbreak

19th February 2018

The National Sheep Association (NSA) has commended Defra’s decision to run a national exercise on foot-and-mouth, simulating a disease outbreak and assessing the ability of the Government, various agencies and local authorities, and the livestock industry to react.

Phil Stocker, NSA Chief Executive, says: “We hope the UK sheep sector never has to face another outbreak of foot-and-mouth, but it would be irresponsible to assume it will never happen and not be ready to react immediately and effectively. As we know from bitter experience, allowing this disease any time to spread has the ability to bring the industry to its knees. We need confidence that Defra, the devolved governments, and Local Authorities have the right processes in place to trace the location of animals, identify any recent moves that could spread disease, and prevent further moves until the situation is understood.  In addition we need to ensure that emergency plans are in place at a Local Authority to quickly implement any actions to avoid spread”

NSA and other industry bodies have been requesting this exercise to take place ever since new sheep movements and traceability databases were created in England and Wales. The robustness of these systems and the ability for them to exchange data between the four UK nations is essential.

Mr Stocker continues: “We are very pleased that Defra has acted on the suggestion of organisations representing the interests of the UK sheep sector. We feel the contribution of NSA has been useful in forming the parameters of the planned exercise, namely in evaluating current systems for reporting/recording sheep movements, sharing information between databases, monitoring cross border moves, dealing with valuable stock and at-risk genetics in the event of a cull, and considering external factors such as public access and footpaths and the role of wildlife.”