Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food and the Intervention Board : BSE, the cost of a crisis report / by the Comptroller and Auditor General.

  • National Audit Office
Date:
1998
Catalogue details

Licence: Open Government Licence

Credit: Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food and the Intervention Board : BSE, the cost of a crisis report / by the Comptroller and Auditor General. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    40 PZT] The scheme regulations originally envisaged that the farmers would present over thirty month animals to the Intervention Board at specially designated abattoirs where the animals would be weighed live and compensation determined. This proposal had the merits of administrative simplicity. However, even before the scheme had begun to operate it was necessary to make arrangements for animals to be accepted through cattle markets, because few abattoirs had facilities for weighing cattle live. In addition, the Regulation was altered to allow farmers to present animals directly to abattoirs for slaughter, giving a choice of entry points into the scheme and to provide an option for producers in England and Wales who had traditionally marketed their cattle on a deadweight basis. 2% Even before the scheme had come into operation and the first animals were slaughtered on 3 May 1996, the crisis had led to a large backlog of unsaleable cattle. The rate at which collection centres could accept animals into the scheme was limited by the available rendering capacity. As a result many farmers were unable to enter animals into the scheme as quickly as they wished. In consequence there was immense pressure on the Intervention Board to eradicate the backlog before the start of winter in 1996. P23 Initial estimates of the backlog as at May 1996 varied considerably. The Ministry considered that it might amount to approximately 130,000 animals, while abattoirs and markets thought it might be significantly larger. The Ministry did not attempt to estimate the true size of the backlog until September 1996, when it carried out a telephone survey of producers, which suggested that the backlog was rather larger than it had expected. E22) In view of this uncertainty the Intervention Board introduced a temporary registration scheme in England and Wales on 21 October 1996. This required farmers to register animals which were available for immediate slaughter; only registered animals would be subsequently accepted. The primary purpose of the registration scheme was to identify the size of the backlog more reliably. Application forms were distributed to 132,558 farmers in England and Wales. By 8 November, 38,479 applications covering 328,138 animals had been returned and registration certificates were sent out for these animals. An analysis of the register by county largely confirmed the Intervention Board’s understanding of where the biggest backlogs lay. It also showed that dairy and breeding cows and bulls made up 82 per cent of the total with steers and heifers constituting the