FOOT-AND-MOUTH DISEASE

HC Deb 05 March 1958 vol 583 cc1297-308

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Colonel J. H. Harrison.]

10.13 p.m.

Mr. Anthony Hurd (Newbury)

I rise to draw attention to a problem which should be troubling us a great deal more and should be taking up more time than we have given to it in recent months or, indeed, years. I want to speak about foot-and-mouth disease outbreaks and the loss they are causing to the economy of the country.

Britain is afflicted all too frequently with these outbreaks of foot-and-mouth disease. We do not generate the infection ourselves; all of it comes from outside. It is a serious matter because, unhappily, Britain has only been completely free from foot-and-mouth disease infection for 16 weeks in the last two years. That is not a good record. In all but 16 weeks one or other part of the country—happily, in many cases, only a small part—has been afflicted by this disease. This has meant that markets have been closed and movement restrictions have necessarily been imposed on livestock on the farms, holding up the normal course of business in the livestock industry.

In addition, taxpayers have been called upon to meet heavy bills for compensation to farmers whose stock, unfortunately, has had to be slaughtered. That bill for compensation has been running at £1 million a year for the last two years. I fear that in the current year it may be over the £1 million mark, because of the very heavy series of outbreaks of the disease which we are now suffering in the West Country.

I am convinced—and I want to make this clear straight away—that we are right to pursue the slaughter policy as the best means of keeping our country free from continuing endemic foot-and-mouth disease infection. We are an island and blessed to that extent by nature. I know that many other countries, having to adopt other and less ruthless, but also less effective, methods of controlling foot-and-mouth disease, long for the day when they will themselves be able to adopt a slaughter policy. I am sure that we are right to continue on that line. If we allowed the disease to become endemic, it would gravely handicap the efficiency of our dairy, beef, sheep and pig industries. We are all trying to raise the efficiency of those industries and it would be folly to contemplate any less drastic measures for stamping out foot-and-mouth disease in this country.

From where does the trouble come? My right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food was good enough to give me some figures on Monday, of which I will remind the House. Taking 1956 and 1957 and the first two months of this year, 41 of the original primary outbreaks have been attributed to South American meat, 36 were spread from infection from the Continent, probably brought by birds, and in 13 primary outbreaks the origin has been considered obscure. Apparently, half our trouble comes with South American meat.

The Minister of Agriculture attributes the blame on circumstantial evidence. We should be in a much stronger position to convince those who send us meat which brings trouble with it if we could have more definite scientific evidence obtained by taking periodical tests of the meat which comes from South America, or anywhere else, in order to pin the blame where it truly belongs. Some of our friends in South America are all too apt to salve their consciences by saying that Britain gets the trouble entirely from birds flying from France and other countries.

We want the most definite scientific evidence in order to place the blame where it belongs. The circumstantial evidence is fairly strong. If there is an outbreak on a farm where pig swill has been found to contain scraps of infected meat, and that meat has been South American, the implication is clear. If an outbreak has come where a sheep dog has been given infected bones which have been traced to South American meat, again the implication is clear. But that is circumstantial evidence and if we can pin it down more decidedly with scientific evidence that would strengthen our case.

What are we doing to protect our herds and flocks? As long ago as 1928, the Bledisloe Agreement was reached with Argentina. I want to speak about Argentina particularly, because that country sends us 98 per cent.—practically all—of the carcase meat which we get from South America.

The Bledisloe Agreement was made in 1928, and the regulations provide for veterinary inspection and certification of cattle coming off the farms, at the markets if they go to market, at the final stage, just before slaughter or even in the freezing works themselves, if they go direct to the freezing works. The agreement also requires a thorough dis-infection of trucks and lorries that carry the stock from the farms, and also the use of new wrappings for the meat shipped here.

At the beginning of last month, I had the opportunity of studying this matter for myself in Argentina. The Argentine Minister of Agriculture was here shortly before Christmas, and I had some talks with him about the problem as it affects his country and ours. At his suggestion, backed by my right hon. Friend who is now Chancellor of the Exchequer, I found it possible—since I was going to the Falkland Islands, anyway—to pay a short visit to Argentina. I have given the present Minister my impressions and the conclusions that I reached while I was there. I shall not go into any detail now.

The Argentine authorities were most helpful. I was able to see whatever I wanted to see and, with the help of two veterinary officers from my right hon. Friend's Department—we have two British veterinary officers attached to the British Embassy at Buenos Aires—I saw a great deal in a few days, and was able to form my own judgment.

The Argentine Minister of Agriculture and his senior veterinary officers frankly recognise that foot and mouth disease is a major economic problem for Argentina. The men at the top and the responsible leaders in the farming community there will not resent some impetus from this country encouraging them to press ahead with measures to control and, one day, as we hope, eliminate the disease.

The crux of the matter is that the farmers in Argentina, Uruguay and other South American countries do not yet take foot-and-mouth disease seriously. For them it is not a killing disease; when dairy cattle get it they go out of milk production, and beef cattle are set back in condition for two or three months, but they almost always recover. But it is a serious burden upon their economy, and I believe that the leaders there are beginning to recognise it. But it is still not recognised by the rank-and-file farmers. The more progressive farmers certainly carry out, more or less strictly, a régime of vaccination three times a year, and this confers immunity on the stock which is properly treated.

But the coverage is far from complete. In Argentina, there are 43 million cattle and 50 million sheep. The output of vaccine is 33 million doses a year, which will provide adequate immunisation for 11 million cattle. Since there are 43 million cattle and 50 million sheep, the coverage is not nearly complete. In the main, those who are using the vaccine fully are the dairy farmers, the pedigree stock breeders and those who are fattening cattle for export to this country. Even so, there are chinks through which the infection reaches us in chilled and frozen meat from Argentina.

I have nothing but praise for the veterinary inspection at the markets or the freezing works. It is being carried out well, by responsible men. They can spot the obvious symptoms of the disease in the animals at the markets and in the freezing works, and those animals which show symptoms are turned away and not used for export. But in a country where foot-and-mouth disease is endemic there are bound to be many cases where the disease is incubating and is not obvious. Cattle may, or may not, show signs when loaded in the country, but if they travel in infected trucks they are incubating the disease by the time they get to the freezing works. I think that that is one of the main sources by which the infection reaches us.

In my view, we shall not be clear of trouble from South America until Argentina determines to clear up the disease by a nation-wide campaign. It will be a big job. It will have to be done by stages, district by district, in the way in which we are successfully tackling the task of eradicting bovine tuberculosis in this country. This is a much bigger problem for Argentina, but I believe that, if she has the will to do it, it may well be possible, with the advances of science, to achieve success within a measurable time.

Argentina will need a great strengthening of her veterinary service to achieve this. At present, there are 700 veterinary officers in the service of the Ministry of Agriculture in Argentina and many are only part-time. The pay is so poor that they have to supplement their livelihood in other ways. That number of officers could not possibly cope with foot-and-mouth disease in a vast country like Argentina. There are not less than 1,000 new outbreaks of the disease recorded each year. I do not say that that is the total, but that is the figure which I was given and which may be taken as a reliable minimum.

We should be able to look to the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations, which is charged by the United Nations with the responsibility for tackling foot-and-mouth disease throughout the world. I ask my right hon. Friend, what is F.A.O. doing to close the avenues by which the disease reaches us, whether from Argentina, France or any other country? We make our contribution to F.A.O. funds. I believe that Argentina also is a member of F.A.O., so we should get helpful action from that organisation.

We must take a downright line with Argentina. It will be for her good as well as ours if we make clear that she runs a serious risk of losing her place in the United Kingdom market for beef unless she takes more determined and effective measures to clear up foot-and-mouth disease and gain a clean bill of health for the meat which she ships to Britain. The United States will not take any carcase meat from Argentina, nor will Canada, because of the risk of intro- ducing foot-and-mouth disease. We will not take carcase meat from Europe for the same reason. We are giving favoured nation treatment to Argentina. We may have to come to a hard decision unless in, say, the next five years Argentina can show she is really on the way to gaining a clean bill of health.

It would be a serious matter for the British consumer if we had to cut off the supplies of South American beef. This chilled beef is first-quality meat, produced and handled carefully to reach our market in good condition. The quantity shipped is now 260,000 tons per year, about one-fifth of our total beef supplies, and far more than we get from Australia who sends 100,000 tons, and New Zealand, who sends 80,000 tons a year. Both Australia and New Zealand are planning to increase their shipments of chilled beef to the United Kingdom.

That will mean more chilled beef and less frozen beef so far as Australia is concerned. Of course, both Australia and New Zealand have a much longer haul than Argentina, and in Australia they have nothing like enough high quality cattle to take the place in our market of the chilled beef we now get from Argentina. But supplies from the Commonwealth will be increasing, and our own home supplies of beef have increased and can increase still further.

I want to say these things in the House so that Argentina may realise that the United Kingdom need not now be so dependent upon her for chilled beef as she has been in past years. As I said, we are now taking 260,000 tons a year from Argentina. Before the war we took no less than 370,000 tons. We are not now so wholly dependent upon Argentina for beef supplies as we were.

It comes to this. We cannot afford any longer to be complacent about the foot-and-mouth disease infection that we get from South America or the continent of Europe. It is a curse to our livestock industry and a heavy burden on our taxpayers. I believe that we should take Argentina firmly by the arm and say, "It is in your interest, as well as in ours, that you should tackle foot-and-mouth disease more effectively. We realise that it is a very big problem for you, and we will help you all we can with technical advice. But we must expect you, if we are to continue to be a good customer of yours, to do more to gain a clean bill of health in the next five years than you have done in the last thirty years since the Bledisloe Agreement was signed."

10.32 p.m.

The Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mr. John Hare)

I think that the House will join with me in expressing gratitude to my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Mr. Hurd) for raising this important matter tonight. I am sure that we were all very interested to hear from my hon. Friend about his recent visit to the Argentine.

I will, if I may, in the fairly short time at my disposal, try to set out our general policy on this matter as well as deal with a number of the important specific points raised by my hon. Friend. In his opening remarks, my hon. Friend, quite rightly, said that we did not generate the disease ourselves. He also quite rightly pointed out the great damage which outbreaks of foot-and-mouth create in British agriculture generally. In fact, the cost of compensation payments to the Government have been high. Already this year we have had to ask the House for £850,000.

Of equal importance, I believe, is the point which my hon. Friend made about the serious interruption which this disease causes in normal farming operations, including the A.I. service, and, perhaps more important still, the irreplaceable loss which occurs when herds which have been the product of years of patient breeding have to be destroyed to the anguish of those who have painstakingly built them up.

In spite of that, however, I have absolutely no doubt that the slaughter policy—no matter how expensive and distressing—is the right one for this country. We must remember the alternatives. In France, for example, where the disease is endemic, there were 99,000 outbreaks in 1957, and that in spite of the very wide use of vaccine against the disease. In that year there were 184 outbreaks in this country. Therefore, if anyone is in doubt about the wisdom of our policy he should consider these figures, and if he has any doubt after that he should read the Gowers Report.

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend that we must take the most stringent precautions possible to prevent the intro- duction of the virus from South America into this country. As he says, rather more than half of the primary outbreaks of the disease—and although our evidence is circumstantial, we are quite certain that we are right on this—come from infected meat imported from South America.

Therefore, I think we have the right to expect that the exporters of meat in South America should take the most stringent precautions possible to avoid the risk of sending this pernicious virus to us. I think that the Argentine authorities have recognised this. We had the Bledisloe Agreement in 1928, but I agree with my hon. Friend that it is not enough for the Argentine Government to be content to rest only on those provisions. I think they realise this; but we must make our own feelings on this matter absolutely clear to them, and I think that what my hon. Friend has said and what I am saying now will help in that connection.

I am sure that only by the widespread and efficient vaccination of the cattle herds in the Argentine can we be protected. As my hon. Friend saw for himself, some progress is being made in that direction. I notice that he gave a Press conference at the British Embassy in Buenos Aires when he was there, and said that he was impressed by the determination of the authorities to make a success of their plan to combat foot-and-mouth disease with the co-operation of farmers who are realising the loss which the disease still imposes on the Argentine's livestock industry. Like my hon. Friend, I welcome the idea of establishing a list of elite herds in the Argentine which are regularly vaccinated and examined by veterinary surgeons.

Although we realise the great problems which face the Argentine authorities in dealing with the problem, I think that, in particular, they arise, as my hon. Friend said, from the limited number of veterinary surgeons available. I would, naturally, hope that the Argentine will plan to build up a veterinary service on a larger scale. In fact, when the Argentine Minister of Agriculture was over here, before Christmas, we emphasised to him our readiness to help in any way that we could. I believe that the Argentine authorities recognise that the research done at Pirbright can be a valuable source of help to them, and I am sure that they know that we are always ready to consider any means of improving the exchange of scientific knowledge between us. Moreover, the problem is constantly under review by our own veterinary experts in the Argentine, who are working in collaboration with the Argentine authorities.

Some people have suggested that we ought to impose a complete ban on the imports of meat from South America until we have complete assurance that no foot-and-mouth virus can be brought in. Frankly, I do not like that proposal. The Argentine provides about 15 per cent. of all our meat and more than 20 per cent. of our supplies of beef—and this beef, incidentally, is of very good quality indeed. There is no possibility in the reasonably near future that the loss could be made good from our own home farms or from Australasia.

In spite of that, I must say that while South American meat brings us, however occasionally, foot-and-mouth disease virus, a question mark must hang over the whole trade. I believe that the Argentine authorities recognise this, and I believe that they will do all they can to improve the position.

We have so far concentrated entirely on the Argentine, but we must also remember that a proportion of the disease comes from the Continent of Europe, spread either by the wind or by birds. I have already referred to the large number of outbreaks in France. In fact, the disease has no frontiers. Therefore, the problem is an international one which, I believe, requires systematic international co-operation.

I am glad that my hon. Friend mentioned the F.A.O. My chief veterinary officer has only just returned from a meeting of the Foot-and-Mouth Commission in Lisbon, where he has been discussing this very problem. I am glad to say that there is likely to be a meeting of the European Foot-and-Mouth Disease Commission in April. I understand that a further meeting under the auspices of the F.A.O. itself may discuss this problem in the autumn, when it meets in Jamaica. I very much hope that international collaboration in this matter will be developed still further. I shall do my best to see that our own representatives will urge upon their colleagues in F.A.O. the important part that organisation can and must play in this campaign against foot-and-mouth disease.

It is very important that, when outbreaks occur in this country, we do all we can to avoid the risk of the spreading of the disease. As far as the imported meat is concerned, proper treatment of swill is of vital importance. If it is boiled the danger is averted, but slipshod methods of carrying out the boiling process can lead to catastrophic results. We must remember the danger of a raw bone for a dog in a rural area.

My own veterinary staff have been dealing with the very troublesome and difficult outbreaks which have been going on in Somerset and some of the neighbouring counties in the South-West. I asked my noble Friend the Joint Parliamentary Secretary to visit those areas last week to satisfy himself there was all possible efficiency in carrying out the remedial operations. He tells me that the people in those areas affected, including the farmers, who have obviously suffered the heaviest blows, are agreed that the job of controlling the spread of the disease during the recent outbreaks has been done with all the efficiency which could be expected.

To sum up, I am certainly in no way complacent about this problem, and I never shall be. I believe that there is still much more that can be done both in Europe and in South America to control this abominable disease. I am most anxious to give all the help we in this country can, particularly on the technical side, to other countries, and, at the same time, to ensure that we here in Britain play a full part in international co-operation in this matter. When outbreaks do occur in this country I am determined to localise them by the drastic methods we have always adopted. I can only hope that, by the combination of these means, we shall be working towards the day when the risk of this foul disease is completely eliminated.

Mr. Sidney Dye (Norfolk, South-West)

Why cannot the right hon. Gentleman stipulate that the meat which comes from Argentina is meat only from herds which are entirely free from the disease, and give notice that we shall take only clean meat, and so save us the trouble which the disease causes in this country?

Mr. Hare

It is all very well to say that, but unless there is complete supervision of the herds in the Argentine, and we can be certain that there will be no likelihood of outbreaks in the herds which are supposed to be clear, it will be very difficult to enforce the sort of supervision the hon. Member has in mind.

The Question having been proposed after Ten o'clock and the debate having continued for half an hour, Mr. SPEAKER adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.

Adjourned at seventeen minutes to Eleven o'clock.