Warning over disease cost burden

Foot-and-mouth cost UK taxpayers around £3bn

Taxpayers should not have to meet the cost of disease outbreaks like bird-flu or foot-and-mouth, according to a House of Commons report.

The Public Accounts Committee said the food industry must shoulder more of the expense of epidemics among animals.

Committee chairman Edward Leigh said it would be "entirely unacceptable" for the public once more to be faced with a bill like that for foot-and-mouth.

The outbreak in 2001 cost UK taxpayers about £3bn.

Mr Leigh said the government's handling of the disease resulted in a "prodigious waste of taxpayers' money" and, as things stand, the taxpayer would be expected to stump up again in the event of another outbreak.

He added that the current threat of bird flu could potentially lead to widespread slaughter of livestock and it was vital that the government move urgently to ensure plans are in place to stop the spread of disease and to control the cost of any outbreak.

Lessons learnt

But the cross-party committee said that the government had learnt many lessons since 2001.

It said improved animal health policies, bans on some animal feeds and restrictions on livestock movements had lessened the risk of an outbreak.

Foot-and-mouth led to the use of massive livestock pyres after the slaughtering of at least 6 million animals, many of which were probably healthy.

Procedures for the valuation of slaughtered stock have been altered amid claims that animals were valued at up to two or three times their genuine worth.

The European Commission has refused to pay out two-thirds of Britain's £960m claim for reimbursement of the costs of the epidemic, largely because it judged that stock had been over-valued.

Levy system

The committee warned that the valuation of pedigree and high-worth stock still depended on the judgment of an individual valuer and should be substantiated by other documentation, as well as comparisons with similar animals in other parts of the country.

It said the introduction of a levy system would not only transfer the financial risk of future outbreaks from taxpayers to farmers, but also provide incentives for farmers to take the biosecurity measures necessary to prevent disease spreading.

The report also called for "enhanced scrutiny" of farmers' compliance with safety standards.

Mr Leigh said: "The 2001 outbreak of foot-and-mouth was a painful experience for this country and the importance of applying the lessons learnt without delay to other animal diseases is becoming all too clear in the light of the current threat of bird flu."