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ON THE RECORD
RECORDED FROM TRANSMISSION BBC-1 DATE: 24.3.96
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JOHN HUMPHRYS: Good afternoon. What can the Government
do to restore confidence in British beef - and save the industry? I'll be
talking to the Agriculture Minister after the news read by MOIRA STUART.
NEWS
HUMPHRYS: Well, WHAT can be done? The
scientists may offer their thoughts but it's down to the politicians to ACT.
We've been joined by both the Agriculture Minister Douglas Hogg and his
opposite number in the Labour Party Dr Gavin Strang. Dr Strang, first. You've
called for a policy of selective slaughtering. What does that mean?
DR GAVIN STRANG MP: Well, it's certainly not the most
important thing that's got to be done. But, what I am saying is that in
addition to introducing the new controls and enforcing them, we've got to move
as quickly as possible to a herd which is free of BSE. And, selective
slaughtering: that means recognising that we have, for example, pure beef herds
where we've never had a BSE case. And, you know, people will tell you there's
no danger of getting a BSE case. There are also places in the country where
you have dairy herds with large numbers of infected animals and where, in fact,
we know it's the older cows.
So, it would be possible to construct a
selective slaughter policy which would accelerate the rate of decline in the
number of BSE cases. But, it's not a panacea. We can't slaughter out BSE in
the way we slaughtered out Foot and Mouth disease but it is an element in the
package, I believe.
HUMPHRYS: But, you've talked about slaughtering -
killing off - those herds where the highest number of cows have been infected.
Now, I'm not sure what that means. If we have two herds of sixty cows and one
of them has had ten infected and another has had twenty infected, do you just
kill off the one with twenty infected, or what?
STRANG: No, frankly, I, really, think it's a
mistake to spend a lot of time on selective slaughtering.
HUMPHRYS: Well, it's an important issue to those
farmers, whose livelihoods are involved in this.
STRANG: Well, it is an important issue and
European vets recommend it but we want the experts. What we expect-suggest
that we draw up a detailed blueprint today. That's all I'm saying, you know.
It's not the way forward. All I'm saying is that if you have a situation
where we know we've herds - pure beef herds - where there's no - virtually
no-there's no - danger actually of developing BSE virtually, and we've other
herds where there's a major problem and a lot of older cows are likely to have
BSE then, surely, you could have a selective slaughtering policy...
HUMPHRYS: I take that point.
STRANG: ...based on the advice of the State
Veterinary Service. That's all I'm saying.
HUMPHRYS: I take that point but are you saying
that some herds that have had BSE infected cows should be left alone. I mean,
really, this is terribly - and, it sounds a little as if you haven't thought
this through.
STRANG: No, I have thought it through. But, of
course, the fact is that the actual detail should be worked out with these
scientists and, above all, with the State vets. I mean, what I'm saying is,
for example: is there any sense in talking about slaughtering a whole national
herd, wiping out the whole dairy and beef industry if you have herds where you
know you've not had any BSE cases and you're never likely to. And, bearing in
mind that in France and Germany they have some BSE cases. So, I mean, what I'm
trying to do is inject some sanity into the discussion about slaughtering.
HUMPHRYS: But, what the Europeans are saying -
and, they seem to be pretty sure about this - is that we should slaughter all
the older cows. Inevitably, that means all the old cull cows, for instance.
In dairy herds, we should slaughter all of those.
STRANG: Well, that-
HUMPHRYS: Do you go along with that?
STRANG: Yes, that would be a starting point -
absolutely.
HUMPHRYS: Ah.
STRANG: But the question is: how old, how young
do you leave them alive? So, yes, you might take all the cows over three years
but that's a lot of cows.
HUMPHRYS: Well, it is but when you said that's a
starting point, do you mean that that is the minimum that should be done?
STRANG: Well, look. Now, the real issue,
frankly, is tackling what is happening in our slaughterhouses. I mean, the
fact of the matter is that the controls, which the Minister announced last
week, have still to come in place. And, you know, last November the State
Veterinary Service which has been hammered by this Government over the years -
totally demoralised, I might say and cut back - they pointed out to us, as
recently as last November - that the basic controls in the slaughterhouses to
make sure that the offal wasn't getting into our food chain were not being
implemented.
I mean, these are the major issues that
have got to be addressed.
HUMPHRYS: Well, the real issue, in another sense -
if we're looking at the future of the beef industry in Britain - is the
restoration of confidence, isn't it? And, a lot of people would say you
slaughter the whole herd - a lot of people have said this. You slaughter the
whole herd. That is one way of restoring confidence. Have you thought of
that?
STRANG: Well, let's be quite clear about this.
What is really the matter of concern here is what happened in the 1980s. We
knew we had a problem. Ministers were told there was a risk. OK, perhaps, a
remote risk but not a risk of food poisoning but a risk of people eating
BSE-infected meat developing Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a human brain
condition, which was, invariably, fatal. Now, people complained about the
Government's inaction. The Labour Party - and, this is not being wise after
the event - Labour MPs repeatedly raised this issue in the House of Commons.
We mounted two full scale debates - that
is the Labour Party - and this is five or six years ago. So, I mean we've got
to address first of all the sheer irresponsibility of Ministers over that
period - and, you've brought out some of that in your film - and, secondly,
we've got to get the additional controls announced in place. And, there are
other controls, by the way, that are still not being put into our
slaugherhouses. And, we've got to see that they're effectively enforced.
Now, Ministers don't do that sitting in
their offices, they do that with the State Veterinary Service. You know, there
are, probably, some young veterinary graduates watching this programme who
don't realise that twenty years ago we had a State Veterinary Service which led
the world. The one we've got now is a shadow of itself.
We've a meat hygience service. We need
public servants to implement these controls, to give advice to the responsible
people in the slaughterhouses and, also, to stop the cowboys allowing the-the
brain and the spinal cord and other bits getting into our carcasses and into
the food chain - as was admitted was happening as recently as last November.
We've got to address the real issues.
HUMPHRYS: If you were in Government, would you
change the structure of the Ministry of Agriculture? Would you remove from the
Ministry of Agriculture the responsibility for our food? In other words, would
you have a Food Ministry, as it were, and an Agriculture Ministry - one serving
the farmers, one serving the consumers?
STRANG: What we would do, is we would set up an
independent food standards agency, which would have as its only purpose the
protection of the consumer. It would have a budget for research, it would
publish all its information, make regular reports to Parliament and would
advise both to the Food and Agriculture Minister and the Health Minister.
But can I make this point? It's the
superficially attractive solution to say that we take food safety and food
quality from Agriculture. You can't divorce food production and food safety.
And, surely, BSE illustrates this.
HUMPHRYS: Plenty of other countries do.
STRANG: We've got to-we've to to implement these
controls on the farms, we've got to implement them in the slaughterhouses. The
failure here is the Minister, and successive Ministers. The prime
responsibility of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture has always been food
safety. There's nothing more important than ensuring that people can buy food
in our shops which they know is safe.
HUMPHRYS: Well, you say-
STRANG: The Ministers have failed on that.
HUMPHRYS: You say you can't divorce them, but let
me read you something that one of your own front bench colleagues, Brian
Wilson, has said. The politics of food are about big money, unhealthy
influence and ruthless marketing upon one side and consumers on the other.
Let's have a Ministry of Food, rather than a farmers'.
Now you're saying that Brian Wilson has
got that wrong, are you?
STRANG: No, I'm supporting Brian. I mean, what
he's saying-
HUMPHRYS: But he wants to separate it. You say he
won't separate it.
STRANG: I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I don't know. I
think you've got that wrong. The point is that food is the priority, right?
HUMPHRYS: Quite clear in that.
STRANG: But, can I just make the point?
There are more important issues here. I mean, to go on about structures: I
mean Brian is right, in this sense: I mean, Ministers have abdicated their
responsibility here. Look first of all at science. Now Mr Hogg will tell
you, of course, we've only just recently discovered BSE. What? 1986 it was
identified, so we've been increasing - sharply, as you'd expect - expenditure
on BSE research. But, the number of food and agricultural scientists - that's
independent Government food and agriculture scientists - has almost been
halved. Indeed, if the Government survives till next year, it will have been
halved. So when the next scare comes up, the next issue comes up, we don't
have that scientific base.
HUMPHRYS: Right. You've raised a point.
STRANG: And, they're even considering selling
off these research establishments and privatising them all.
HUMPHRYS: Alright, you'd reappoint all of those
people who have been sacked. You would say we'll double the number of
scientists, come what may, come-or whatever the cost?
STRANG: I'm not saying that and you know it.
HUMPHRYS: Well-
STRANG: I'm sorry. You listen to this. What
we've got to have is a cost effective solution. It's going to cost a fortune,
these mistakeS that have been made by Government. Does anyone think we're
going to get out of this, that we're going to restore public confidence? And,
that means tackling the safety issue first. Once we've done that, once people
see that we're actually, we've actually made our beef safe, then confidence
will come back and then people will start to buy our beef again. Not just
McDonalds, but the people who buy it abroad.
HUMPHRYS: Right.
STRANG: Now we've got to tackle that issue and-
And, so, talk about, you know, saving money here, it's a huge expenditure we're
now involved in, no matter what happens.
HUMPHRYS: OK.
STRANG: The idea that we don't want to support
our research base, to support our state veterinary service and give them the
support they need in this crisis is-is strange. Of course I'm not saying we
should double overnight the amount of money we spend on Government agricultural
science. Unfortunately we can't do that, we've lost the scientists anyway.
HUMPHRYS: Dr Strang, thank you very much indeed.
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