Mr. Paterson: To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what assessment she has made of whether reportedincidence of bovine TB in (a) 2002 and (b) 2003 offer a secure statistical baseline against which differences inincidence in 2004 may be measured. [184694]Mr. Bradshaw: TB testing was all but suspended during the foot and mouth disease (FMD) outbreak in 2001 and did not fully recover topre-FMD levels until February 2002. The effect of this suspension of testing on the underlying trends in TB incidence for 2001 andsubsequent years is hard to gauge, for the following reasons: The TB testing effort in 2002 was initially aimed at high-risk herds.Disease would have had more time to spread in herds where normally it might have been detected more quickly. Restocking of herdsafter FMD led to the disease being spread to areas it had not been found for some time. The level of testing in 2002 and 2003required to clear the backlog was much higher than normal (the backlog was reduced to pre-FMD level by spring 2003).The trends seen in TB herd incidence and number of reactors slaughtered in 2001 and 2002 should, therefore, be treated with cautionand are probably not comparable with those of earlier years. TB incidence rates and testing patterns for 2003 and 2004 appear tohave settled down enough to make valid comparisons with pre-FMD trends.