Specified Bovine Material (Hansard, 8 July 1997)

§ Mr. Rooker

The cleansing requirements for vehicles transporting waste material form the slaughter of cattle, including Specified Bovine Material (SBM), were considered by the Spongiform Encephalopathy Advisory Committee (SEAC) in May last year. It concluded that decontamination and proper cleaning of vehicles was important but that given the extreme nature of the chemicals which had to be used if chemical disinfection were to be relied upon it was more important to use dilution and washing with large quantities of water and detergent to ensure that vehicles were returned to a suitable state for further use.

The Specified Bovine Material Order 1997 requires any person transporting SBM to ensure that the vehicle, or part of the vehicle, in which it is conveyed is impervious and contains nothing but SBM. It must be kept covered at all times except for loading or unloading or inspection by an authorised officer of an enforcement authority. It also requires that any person transporting SBM shall ensure that the part of the vehicle in which SBM is carried is thoroughly washed and disinfected before any food, feeding stuff or other animal material or any cosmetic, pharmaceutical or medical product is subsequently placed in that part of the vehicle.

Enforcement of the vehicle cleansing requirements set out in the Specified Bovine Material Order 1997 is the responsibility of local authorities. No central record is kept of the number of local authority inspectors that examine vehicles transporting SBM or how many inspections they have made since 1 August 1996 or how many vehicles failed local authority inspections and this information could be obtained only at disproportionate cost.