§ Mr. BercowTo ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what new initiatives her Department has taken in 2001–02 to assist in achieving its Public Service Agreement targets. [47200]
§ Mr. MorleyInformation about progress on PSA targets will be published in the Department's 2002 departmental report.
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§ Mr. BercowTo ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what recent assessment she has made of whether the PSA target for reducing the incidence of BSE will be met in 2002. [47906]
§ Mr. MorleyThe number of clinically suspect cases of BSE reported in Great Britain continues to decline, and the epidemic has now fallen to levels well below those observed when the disease was first made notifiable in 1988.
The Department's Public Service Agreement (PSA) target for the control of BSE is:
To reduce the annual incidence of BSE to less than 650 cases by 2001 and by 2004 to be on track for fewer than 30 cases by 2006. This reflects a 99 per cent. reduction compared with 1997 when there were 4,312 cases".This target is based on confirmed, clinical cases. The actual figure for 2001 is likely to be around 780 confirmed BSE cases in cattle presented as clinical suspects. Progress against the PSA target has been affected by movement restrictions introduced to deal with the foot and mouth outbreak. This has disrupted the slaughter of older cattle under the OTMS because available rendering capacity has been used to dispose of the carcases of animals arising from the control of FMD. This, in turn, has increased the mean age of the cattle population and resulted in more cases than previously anticipated. Nevertheless, the outturn for 2001 still represents a reduction of more than 40 per cent. compared to 2000 when there were 1,311 cases in cattle presented as clinical suspects. The epidemic continues to decline rapidly and there is no particular concern at present in relation to the 2004 and 2006 targets.