§ LORD STRACHIE rose to call attention to the Report of the Departmental Committee on the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease which occurred in 1923–24; and to move for Papers. The noble Lord said: My Lords, I think it is very desirable that agriculturists should know what attitude my noble friend who speaks for the Ministry of Agriculture is going to take on this question. I cannot help thinking that the general feeling of agriculturists in this country is that this Report is very feeble and indecisive, and 579 very inadequate for dealing with this great question. I should like my noble friend, first of all, to consider some remarks that I shall make as regards the summary of conclusions. One of the difficulties of considering this Report is that, for some reason best known to the Ministry, though I suppose they will say it is a question of expense, none of the evidence of the witnesses, which would be very valuable indeed, is available to the ordinary public or to any member of your Lordships' House. It has not been printed. In this case I think it might have been a. very good thing if it had been printed. The cost would not have been very heavy. It is not as if in all cases the printing of witnesses' evidence had been abandoned since the War, and I think this is one of the cases where it was very desirable that we should have it before us. So one can only refer to the summary of the evidence given, and the summary of the Committee's general conclusions.
§ I would first of all draw attention to Paragraph 128. The Committee there say that there are three possible courses to adopt when a landing place is within a restricted district, and the decision adopted with regard to one of these alternatives must rest with the Ministry I think it would have been very much better if this Committee, which had heard evidence and was composed of men who were more or less experts, had taken their courage in their hands and recommended to the Ministry what they should do in this particular matter, because the precautions to be taken as regards animals which have been landed are of very great importance indeed. There is very little doubt that in many cases infection has been spread from the port where the landing has taken place. I hope, therefore, that my noble friend may give some indication of what is the intention of the Government, because indecision is very harmful indeed.
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The three alternative proposals put before the Government in Paragraph 128 are these:—
I think the safest way would be to allow no stock to be landed while the district is subject to any form of restriction. I think that is more likely to be efficacious, and I hope that the Ministry will adopt that course.
§ I should also like to know what the Ministry mean to do with regard to Paragraph 134, in which the Committee say that they are unable to recommend the general prohibition of the importation of hay and straw used at the time of importation for packing merchandise. I have raised this question time after time in this House at the request of the agricultural committee of Somerset, and I believe there is a very strong feeling generally among agriculturists that it would be very desirable that some restriction should be made with regard to the burning of all straw coming to this country from infected areas. There was a particular case in which an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease was clearly traced to straw packing. We have been told that such a prohibition would interfere with the importation of manufactured articles, but that is rebutted by the fact that it is well known that wood fibre is very largely used now as a substitute for straw in packing, and there is no difficulty about the use of wood fibre if the Ministry would only prohibit the importation of straw.
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Then I am rather surprised at Paragraph 152, in which the Committee say:—
the detention of all animals after exposure in a market or sale, is desirable, but reflection will show that under the conditions under which the livestock trade is carried on, it would be very difficult of enforcement
It seems a very curious thing for the Committee to say that a thing is very desirable indeed, and then to add that it is very difficult to enforce it. There may be cases where it is absolutely necessary to enforce such Regulations, however difficult it may be, if we are to put an end to the outbreaks of foot-and-mouth disease, and I do not think my noble friend would deny that we suffer very terribly from outbreaks of that disease, which cause an immense amount of distress and inconvenience to the agriculturists. Certainly we ought not to be
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afraid of a little inconvenience in trying to stop these outbreaks, as the Committee seem to be.
§ Then there is a, very curious paragraph. Paragraph 171, in which they say that the recommendation of the Committee of 1922, that the Regulations under the Foot-and-Mouth Disease Order should be made only under a joint committee, must he abandoned. They give no reason, except the very futile one that it would be very difficult to get the local authorities to work together. I am rather surprised that the gentlemen who signed this Report, especially Captain Pretyman, who is a great landowner and has taken part in public work, should think this impossible. My own experience is that it is every easy, if there is good will on both sides, for the local authorities to work together for any particular purpose of this sort, and it seems to me that it is very desirable Resolutions have been passed by agricultural bodies, such as the Royal Agricultural Society and the Central Chamber of Agriculture, asking the Ministry to introduce co-ordination of the local authorities within the geographical area of the county. I am glad to know that the Ministry apparently do not think the views put forward by this Committee are of very great value, because they have issued a draft Bill, with suggestions, to be sent out to the local authorities, for forming a joint committee in the geographical area of the county for carrying this out. I feel certain that if you have a joint committee you will get men of common sense meeting together, and there would be no difficulty in administering the orders for the prevention and restriction of foot-and-mouth disease whenever an outbreak took place.
§ I should like also to know what is the view of the Ministry as regards Paragraph 172, in which it is said that it is desirable that the veterinary inspectors of local authorities should, if possible, be free from the attachments of private practice. I know that may be very difficult to deal with, but if it could be done there is no doubt it would be a great advantage, because there is danger of a man in private practice going from infected herds to herds in his private practice which are not infected and carrying the infection. This has undoubtedly happened in certain cases.
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Further, I would like to know what is being done generally in the way of taking precautions to disinfect railway trucks and wharves when cattle are landed from abroad. It seems to me to be desirable that something should be done in that way. I notice that in Paragraph 125 the Committee recommend—
that the Ministry should consider the practicability of requiring the disinfection of sacks which have contained imported feeding stuffs, before they are permitted to circulate in the ordinary course of home trade
There is no doubt that a great deal of suspicion has attached to feeding stuffs brought into this country in ships which had previously carried diseased cattle, and I hope the Ministry will give your Lordships an assurance that they are dealing with this matter in such a way as to make it impossible in the future that infected ships, or sacking used in ships in which there has been infection shall be the means of bringing that infection to this country. I am certain that every possible means should be taken to close any and every loophole through which infection may enter the country.
§ There is one matter which came to my knowledge in regard to which there appeared to be a certain amount of neglect on the part of officers of the Ministry. We had to prosecute a man in my country for bringing cattle from Bristol landing stage into the County without a licence. When I remonstrated with the Ministry about it, I was told that the gentleman who was in charge at Bristol had been taken away, and that his substitute had not been informed of the regulation of the County of Somerset which prohibited cattle being brought from Bristol into that County without the knowledge of the local authority. I think it was most unfortunate that such a thing should have happened. However, we were very much on the alert, the cattle were stopped and the man was fined for attempting to take them into the County.
§ That is a case which came to my personal knowledge and there may be other such cases. I hope, therefore, that the Ministry will be most careful to see that there is no similar neglect on the part of their inspectors, because, as my noble friend is aware, there has been a good deal of complaint, certainly in Cheshire, of carelessness on the part of 583 inspectors in regard to the issue of licences and as to their not having been active in this matter. I will not go further into details because I understand that my noble friend has another engagement and is hoping, no doubt, that the debate will come to a speedy conclusion. I will content myself with moving the Motion standing in my name on the Paper.
§ THE PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY OF THE MINISTRY OF AGRICULTURE AND FISHERIES (LORD BLEDISLOE)My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Strachie, as your Lordships know, is the most assiduous custodian of agricultural interests in your Lordships' House and I, for my part and on behalf of the Ministry of Agriculture, certainly take no exception whatever to his bringing forward this afternoon this very serious question as to the best way of dealing with this insidious disease with a view to its suppression. Your Lordships will agree, I think, that under the very abnormal conditions which arose last year and the year before in regard to contagious animal diseases—conditions unprecedented in our national history, so far as we are aware—a very severe strain was put, not only upon the nation's resources, but upon the available staff of the Ministry of Agriculture, which rendered effective administration in the circumstances extremely difficult.
The noble Lord has referred this afternoon to what is generally known as the Pretyman Report of 1924, and I should like to take this opportunity of expressing, on behalf of the Ministry of Agriculture, our grateful thanks to Captain Pretyman and his Committee for the immense amount of trouble which they took in order to assist the Ministry of Agriculture in their administration in regard to animal diseases in the future. But when the noble Lord asks us what action we intend to take in regard to this Report, it is only fair to tell him that the Report was issued during the last two or three months. It is a very voluminous Report and is now under the most careful consideration, in all its details, of the Ministry I represent. Not only are we very much impressed with the value of many of the recommendations made in that Report, but I can assure the noble Lord that there is every chance that many 584 of those recommendations will be accepted by the Department and put into effective operation.
In reference to printing the detailed evidence which came before this Committee, after all we have to be reasonably economical in these days when national burdens are very serious, and I doubt whether many of your Lordships would support the noble Lord's suggestion that a large amount of public money should be expended upon printing verbatim the very voluminous evidence which was submitted to this Committee. A valuable summary of the evidence has been published, and the Treasury have expressed a strong objection to printing anything further in this connection.
The second point which the noble Lord brought to your Lordships' attention was that in Paragraph 128 of their Report the Committee suggested three alternative "courses to adopt when a landing place is within a restricted district" When my noble friend Lord Strachie suggests that for the better guidance of the Department the Committee ought to have selected one of the three alternatives, after all that is a matter for the Committee and not for the Ministry of Agriculture. But we are obliged to the noble Lord for his suggestion in relation to the particular alternative which he thinks most desirable. It is one which we are exploring and which possibly may be adopted.
He then referred to Paragraph 135, which deals with the importation of hay and straw used for packing merchandise The difficulty about adopting this suggestion, as the noble Lord must realise, is that it is calculated—and the Pretyman Committee fully realised this—to embarrass very seriously the trade of this country. The noble Lord did not read the latter portion of the paragraph, but what the Committee said in this connection was—
In our view, to impose a prohibition or to require the destruction at the port of imported packing material would involve an interference with our overseas trade in the many articles habitually packed in hay and straw of such a far-reaching character as could only be justified by an overwhelming case. We are aware that, action on these lines has already been taken by other countries, but we do not think the conditions and volume of trade involved are comparable.585 I think we are bound to pay respectful attention to the Committee when they point out to us the difficulty of carrying this suggestion into practice without serious dislocation of the trade of the country. But it is being considered to what extent this packing material can be rendered less noxious and less harmful in its possibility of spreading disease. We fully realise the danger, and we have in existence Orders, of which the noble Lord is aware, which enable us to take useful action of an administrative character in this connection.When the noble Lord, in referring to Paragraph 152, complains of the Committee recommending a certain course of action, and deprecates its adoption as being difficult to carry out, of course I am not here to defend either the mentality, or indeed the recommendations, of the Pretyman Committee. We shall give our best consideration to this and to other paragraphs, and take upon ourselves the responsibility of considering whether any action in this connection is practicable or not.
I was glad to notice that the noble Lord referred to Paragraph 169 and following paragraphs, dealing with the very serious and important question of efficient administration within an area in which more than one local authority is operating. I am bound to confess that we were ourselves a little surprised to note the somewhat different conclusion at which this Committee arrived when reporting in 1922 and when reporting in 1924 respectively, and we certainly are so much impressed by the importance of having one geographical unit only, or, rather, having the county as a geographical unit of administration, that we already have in draft a Bill, which is now being considered by the County Councils Association and the Association of Municipal Corporations, and which provides that the county authorities and the county borough authorities shall alone have jurisdiction in these matters—that is ruling out all the borough council authorities for this purpose—and that there shall in fact be set up a joint committee of the two remaining authorities, the county councils and the county borough councils, who shall be able to act jointly, so that there will be one body only which will deal with foot-and-mouth disease and other serious contagious 586 diseases within the county geographical area.
The noble Lord referred to the employment as veterinary inspectors of veterinary surgeons in private practice. The difficulty in this connection, of course, is that if you are going to employ for Departmental purposes, under such conditions as were prevailing during the last two years, especially in Cheshire where these outbreaks were so serious, persons whose sole duty shall be to attend to these matters—I do not know what my noble friend Lord Banbury of Southam would say if he were here—it would mean a whole army of officials, whose appointment, I am sure, many of your Lordships would very much deprecate. In this connection I can reassure the noble Lord, because we fully realise that we had not a sufficient inspectorate during the Cheshire outbreaks of 1923 and 1924, and we have persuaded the Treasury to authorise the appointment of twenty more inspectors than were previously employed, whose specific duty it will be to attend to these matters—that is to say, the inspectorate, in fact, has been raised from eighty to one hundred—thus rendering it less necessary to employ private practitioners for this purpose.
As regards the disinfection of railway trucks and wharves, this is a matter about which the Ministry has been in close consultation with the railway authorities, and there is no doubt that a better system of disinfection is likely to be carried out in future. Various disinfectants have been tried. Some of the disinfectants previously employed have not proved to be beyond criticism. Considerable pressure has been put upon the railway companies, and there is every prospect of more drastic measures being taken thoroughly to disinfect both railway trucks and wharves in the future. I think the noble Lord referred also to the dangers arising from the importation of foodstuffs in sacks on the same ships as cattle. So far as that is concerned, it is a matter which is under the careful consideration of the Ministry, and we are at the present moment considering how far we can take measures to prevent this risk (which we admit) without seriously interfering with the ordinary trade practice of the country.
Finally, the noble Lord referred to what is known as the Bristol case. I 587 quite frankly admit that our veterinary inspector went beyond his legitimate authority in deciding in this case that animals within the infected area should be removed to some fields outside that area, without the approval or authority of the county council, and directions have since been given to all the Ministry's inspectors that animals must not be moved on their initiative out of infected areas, but that in every case, if a hardship is thought to be involved by the retention of them in loco, reference shall at once be made to the Ministry, which, of course, would then obtain the consent of the county council to such movement before granting the licence. In this case there is no doubt, as the noble Lord is aware, that there were certain animals, in the month of April last year, for which it was found very difficult to provide proper food, winter food having run very short in that particular district. The owner made a strong protest against the retention of the animals where they were, within the infected area, and the veterinary inspector, out of feelings of humanity, took upon himself to move them to some fields outside the area. I do not think, if I remember aright, that the Somerset County Council traversed in any way the justice or the fairness of such action in the circumstances, but the Somerset County Council objected to such action being taken without their being consulted, and in that we entirely supported them. We shall take care that such an incident shall not occur in future.
I think it would be some relief to your Lordships if I told you that there is a reasonable prospect at the present time, after the very serious experiences through which we have passed, of reverting to what I may call the normal condition of foot-and-mouth disease prevalence in this country. Whereas, at the end of the month of April last year, there were 63 outbreaks, with 1,456 cattle. 1,690 sheep and 724 pigs slaughtered, for the same month in this year there were only two outbreaks, with 69 cattle and 45 sheep slaughtered. No pigs were included in the number of slaughtered animals. When one comes to consider the prevalence of this extremely infectious disease in several countries of Europe ever since the War, I think we have a great deal to congratulate ourselves upon that we are now getting this dangerous 588 disease well in hand, and are not suffering the terrible losses which are being experienced in Germany, France, Holland and elsewhere. As your Lordships know, when the disease was at its worst in Cheshire, many suggestions were made that the time had come to drop the policy of slaughter. We are very thankful that overwhelming pressure was not put upon the Ministry at the time which might have resulted in the abandonment of a policy which has given us a much better record during the last thirty or forty years, in the matter of serious contagious animal diseases, than any other country in Europe, or most other countries in the world, possess.
Before I sit down your Lordships might like to know what has happened in the matter of research into this disease. Your Lordships are, of course, aware that foot-and-mouth disease is not a serious disease except in the sense that it is highly infectious, probably the most infectious disease known to animals or man in the world. But it is not a serious disease, and no more than 5 or 7 per cent, of the animals actually die from the disease in those countries where slaughter does not take place. But the difficulty about any research work, with the view of finding some preventive, is that this particular microbe is ultramicroscopic, and is filterable; that is to say, you cannot catch it. When we were told a year ago that certain professors, Professor Frosch and Professor Dahmen, in Germany had actually cultivated the virus of foot-and-mouth disease, we were all impressed with the possibility of successful protective inoculation being available in the near future. It is not for me to ask what has happened in connection with this research work in Germany, but we have reason to believe that the claims made by these gentlemen have not been substantiated, and we are, I am sorry to say, much where we were a year ago. A Departmental Committee which has been set up in this country, composed of distinguished scientists, is examining this matter and we expect an interim Report from them in the course of the next few weeks. At this late hour of the evening I am sure your Lordships would not wish me to go further into the whole difficult problem of eradicating this contagious animal disease, but I hope 589 I have said sufficient to satisfy my noble friend opposite.
§ LORD STRACHIEMy Lords, in asking leave to withdraw my Motion, should like to say how much obliged I am to my noble friend for the full statement he has made. I assure him that we agriculturists feel every confidence that he will do everything he can, by a more strict investigation in all these cases, by screwing up the administration and adopting some of the valuable Reports we have received, to ensure that we shall not get one of these dreadful outbreaks again.
§ Motion, by leave, withdrawn.