Heads must roll over foot and mouth failure

1.43.03pm UTC (GMT +0000) Fri 7th Sep 2007

Commenting on the Spratt and HSE reports into the Surrey foot and mouth outbreak, and the Government response, Liberal Democrat shadow environment food and rural affairs secretary Chris Huhne said:

"These reports point the finger at Pirbright as the source of the Surrey foot and mouth outbreak. It is shocking and appalling that facilities designed to protect British farming have damaged it. Farmers are right to be angry and concerned about the slapdash, complacent and negligent handling of a deadly virus that caused £6 billion of devastation to the rural economy in 2001.

"It is extraordinarily complacent that an effluent pipe was left unrepaired for three years in what was meant to be a high security bio-containment facility. Heads must roll. Defra were warned, and failed to act. The most senior person who was informed of this situation - whether minister or civil servant - must be held to account for this error of judgement and must be sacked for incompetence as they would be elsewhere. Without personal accountability, similar complacency will rule in future.

"It is also crazy that contractors improving such a bio-secure site were not themselves taking more care over the potential spread of the virus. There is little doubt that the virus spread because contractors' lorries from Pirbright drove past the farms where the foot and mouth outbreak occurred.

"There is also a clear conflict of interest between Defra's role in licensing the Pirbright site, and its role in signing off expenditure to make it bio-secure. These functions need to be clearly separated. How on earth Defra could license a bio-secure plant where there was no routine maintenance or even inspection of the drainage and treatment facilities is beyond belief.

"The farmers whose businesses have been destroyed now have the strongest possible claim against both Pirbright and the Department."

Notes to editors:

1.The National Emergency Epidemiology Group report states that the Surrey foot and mouth outbreak this summer originated at Pirbright.

2.Defra were warned by Merial in a letter received by the Department's Veterinary exotic diseases division of the need to renewal an old effluent drain between the restricted area of Merial and the Institute for Animal Health effluent treatment plant on 26 July 2004. The general state of the facility was highlighted in a report in 2002.

3.The Health and Safety Executive report states: "Neither the existing effluent drainage system in use across the Pirbright site nor the record keeping, maintenance and monitoring regimes in place for it are considered to meet the standards required for SAPO level 4." (Page 45 para 17)