THE “creeping degradation of standards” that led to last summer’s foot-and-mouth outbreak in Surrey must never be allowed again, an independent inquiry said yesterday.

Mar 12 2008 by Sam Wood, The Journal

Its chairman, Iain Anderson, described the animal health laboratories at Pirbright, from where the disease escaped into local livestock, as a shabby and dilapidated place where regulation and risk management were poor.

Dr Anderson, who led the inquiry into the 2001 outbreak, said there needed to be a clarity of ownership and responsibility for the site, which is shared by the Institute of Animal Health (IAH) and private company Merial.

While the funding and governance of the IAH was muddled and ineffective, and the facilities at Pirbright fell short of international standards, the science that came out of it was first class, he said.

Launching his review into the 2007 outbreak, he called for the Institute of Animal Health to be turned into a new National Institute of Infectious Diseases to give higher priority to the area of animal health.

Livestock on eight farms in the Surrey area were infected with foot-and-mouth in August and September last year, probably due to live FMD virus being used to develop a vaccine leaking from faulty pipework and spreading from the site.

Dr Anderson pointed the finger at those responsible for the situation at Pirbright: the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) as the regulator, the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills and formerly the DTI, which are responsible for the site and funding, the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council as the funding body, the governing body and management at the Institute of Animal Health.

He said the 2007 foot-and-mouth outbreak should never have happened. “This virus should never have got out. Everything was wrong around Pirbright, the regulatory system was poor, the risk management was poor,” he said.

Dr Anderson said the communications between Defra, IAH and Merial had been poor, and a secondary leak in November – which was contained – showed they were still inadequate.

And while his remit was to look at foot-and-mouth, which is only kept at Pirbright in the UK, he said he would not be surprised if problems existed at other high containment facilities.

He said the leadership shown in 2007 – from the Prime Minister down – could not have been in sharper contrast to the dithering and failure to make crisp, quick, sharp-edged decisions over the 2001 outbreak.

And until the second phase of the outbreak began – with a new case found just days after the country was declared free of the disease – the Government had the full backing of the industry.

He said: “With the benefit of hindsight this decision was wrong,” adding that in the future a more conditional approach to declaring an outbreak over should be put in place.

And with around 250 people a day, and a maximum of 450, on the frontline of dealing with the eight cases in August and September, Dr Anderson raised concerns about what would happen in a larger-scale outbreak.

There was also a lack of data about the animals in the area and movements, a situation which had not improved from the large-scale outbreak in 2001, he said.

Dr Anderson said his proposed National Institute of Infectious Diseases should be given high priority to deal with animal disease and the rise of zoonotic diseases which can spread from animals to people.

He also called for an independent advisory body to advise the Government on which both the Chief Veterinary Officer and the Chief Medical Officer would sit.