................................................................................ ON THE RECORD RECORDED FROM TRANSMISSION BBC-1 DATE: 24.3.96
................................................................................ 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.