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Listen to this siteMonday 15 August 2005
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The Agency held an Open Board Meeting in London on Monday 15 August. The meeting was attended by 80 stakeholders and members of the public, and viewed on live webcast by over 250 people.
The Board discussed one paper: Review of the Over Thirty Months (OTM) Rule: Establishment of an Effective BSE Testing Regime. Board members also heard updates from the Agency's Chair Deirdre Hutton, presiding over her first meeting, and from Agency Chief Executive Jon Bell.
Review of the Over Thirty Months (OTM) Rule: Establishment of an Effective BSE Testing Regime
Last December, the Government announced in principle that the current rule excluding cattle older than thirty months from the food chain could be replaced with a system by which these animals are tested and then allowed to enter the food chain if the test is negative. The FSA was asked to advise Ministers on whether a robust testing system had been developed before the change could take place.
The initial decision to review the rule back in 2002 came about as a result of a steep decline in BSE cases, which continue to fall – from over 36,000 clinical cases at its peak in 1992 to 82 clinical cases last year. The main BSE control, the removal of Specified Risk Material – which removes over 99% of any possible infectivity in cattle – will remain in place.
The other key control, the ban on mammalian meat and bone meal being fed to farm animals, is also unchanged and all animals born before August 1996 will continue to be excluded from the food chain.
The rule change would bring the UK into line with the rest of the EU where testing of OTM cattle has been operating successfully since 2001.
Following its consideration of a report from the Independent Advisory Group that had rigorously scrutinised the proposed system and overseen a number of trials of it, the Board agreed to advise Ministers that:
The Board also agreed to advise Ministers that it considered that there were a number of specific requirements that must be met before the change could take place:
The Board also agreed that should the Implementation Review Group at any time have concerns about the system, then it is essential that the Board is able to advise Ministers to call a halt to operations.
The Agency's Chief Executive added that that the development of a comprehensive communications strategy was in progress to inform consumers and stakeholders of the proposed changes as soon as possible. This will include a new BSE leaflet that will be made available to supermarkets and others.
Report from the Agency’s Chair
Agency Chair Deirdre Hutton informed the Board of developments since the previous meeting with regard to the Agency’s Consumer Engagement Strategy.
She said that there had been agreement at the previous meeting that the Agency needed a more fundamental rethink on consumer engagement than had perhaps been covered in the paper presented to the Board and which had focused more on the issue of structure than on function.
Members of the Agency’s Consumer Committee were very positive that the Board was taking the issue seriously, she said, and they had expressed a willingness to extend their terms of office until agreement had been reached on the strategy.
The Consumer Engagement Strategy was a ‘significant part of the new strategic period for the Agency’ and represented ‘a really significant underpinning of what we are going to do and the way we are going to do it’, the Chair said.
She said that the Board needed to think together about what outcomes the Agency wished to achieve and, bearing this in mind, what forms and structures would have to be in place to enable this to happen.
Having spoken to Board members it had become apparent that it would be useful for the Board to spend half a day discussing the Consumer Engagement Strategy at its away day in November.
The Chair also informed the Board that she had asked the Chief Executive to commission a paper on consumer engagement that looked at the things the Agency had done, and that gave an honest appraisal of what had worked and what had not worked.
Chief Executive's report
The Chief Executive told the Board that, following his report at the previous Board meeting in July, he had recently informed the Agency that its survey work and the publication of the results could now be resumed.
He said that a series of refresher seminars had been held in late July and early August for staff responsible for handling technical surveys for the Agency.
More than 100 people had already taken part and more staff would attend seminars in September. The seminars already held had also been useful in providing feedback from staff on what had been working well and less well with the survey guidelines.
Starting in September, the Agency would be reviewing the survey guidelines, which are published on the Agency’s website at the moment, prior to inviting input from stakeholders, consumers and the Board.
The Chief Executive said that, having taken account of what came up in the seminars, he had announced that the Agency was able to resume the publication of surveys subject to certain conditions. These included:
Following on from this, all ‘brand owners’ should be given sufficient time (at least three working days) to see their brand work in the form in which it will be released. This will enable them to have a chance to comment on the accuracy and be ready if there is Press comment on the results.
The Chief Executive said that, where the analysis of samples shows that results fall outside expected ranges or are beyond established limits, then the brand owners should be informed of their individual results and, except where urgent action is needed, allowed three weeks to provide comments on their work, which can be published alongside the survey.
The Chief Executive added that internal management changes had also been instituted to reinforce the process of handling surveys.
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