Farming for the Future
Uploaded January 2008

Extracted from The Secretary of State Hilary 8enn's speech to the Farming for the Future Conference on November 19th 2007The events of these last few months have brought home to us - in dramatic fashion - the importance of managing risk of animal disease.

Now I know this won't be popular with everyone, but I have to tell you that my experience of dealing with the outbreaks of Avian Influenza, Foot and Mouth and Bluetongue this summer have brought home to me that cost and responsibility is not "just another thing to deal with" - I have seen how this is the right direction and we need to get moving. I want the industry to be much more deeply involved in the key policy and operational decisions, and rather than shy away from hard choices I think now is an opportune time to reinvigorate this debate.

Some advised me not to raise this now, because of the difficulties over the summer. But I have to tell you the truth. The current arrangements are unsustainable. Public spending on animal health and welfare is in excess of £400m a year, and that is without the additional costs of dealing with disease outbreaks. Direct costs to the taxpayer for the 2001 Foot and Mouth crisis were of the order of £3 billion, with wider costs to the economy a further £5 billion.

I want to reform the current system so that farmers - those who benefit more than anyone else from well managed risk - are central to the decision making process and contribute to the costs of those decisions in a fair way. In doing so, not only will disease risk be reduced, but so will the regulatory burden on farmers - and with it the feeling that Defra has put controls in place for its own reasons. We don't do that. In the future, the industry should take those decisions because no-one has a greater incentive to get it right than you do.

Something else will push us in this direction - European Community animal health policy is expected to change. I want Britain to be in a position to influence this debate and to secure an outcome which recognise the unique structures and dynamics of the livestock industry. So that's another reason to begin this process now.

We will therefore be looking to consult before Christmas. We will be asking you for your views, and, in particular, those of individual livestock keepers with whom we will be engaging through a series of regional workshops over an extended consultation period of 18 weeks.

As part of this, I think the industry should explore market based ways of managing animal disease risks, including the associated costs.