Brown to give evidence to FMD inquiry

Former agriculture minister Nick Brown will give evidence tomorrow to the European Parliament’s special inquiry into the handling of the foot-and-mouth crisis.

He is likely to get a rough ride from Conservative Euro MPs on the ‘‘Temporary Committee’’ which has been given a year to study the outbreak and its causes and come up with recommendations for how to tackle such diseases more effectively in future.

The Government signalled from the start its willingness to co-operate with the investigation, but Labour MEPs fear it will be used by the Tories to put Prime Minister Tony Blair on the rack for as long as possible.

Labour’s agriculture spokesman in the European Parliament, Gordon Adams, himself a member of the committee, insisted: ‘‘We have established quite clearly that this is not an exercise in government bashing.’’

But Conservative committee member Robert Sturdy said: ‘‘There is no doubt that Nick Brown’s actions in handling the foot-and-mouth outbreak in the UK will be a central issue we will have to consider.’’

Most of the committee’s work will involve analysing the way the disease spreads to several new countries.

The MEPs will particularly look at whether a policy of vaccination - currently ruled out in the EU because vaccination itself means closing all markets to export should be brought in to replace the kind of mass slaughter ordered by the UK Government.

EU health and consumer Commissioner David Byrne told the committee in Brussels this afternoon that there was no evidence that it was wrong for new governments to reject vaccination as a weapon in fighting the disease.

He acknowledged that there had been suggestions that the crisis could have been avoided through a generalised vaccination of the EU livestock population.

But he added: ‘‘It is simply not credible that the entire population of susceptible livestock should have been inoculated.’’

He said the last outbreak of the latest foot-and-mouth disease crisis had occurred on September 30th last year, but went on:

‘‘However it would be a very serious error to believe that the book is therefore closed on the crisis. The sheer scale, cost and impact of the crisis called for a fundamental review of our approach towards major animal diseases.’’

Mr Brown’s evidence tomorrow will be followed by a report from the Government’s chief veterinary officer, Jim Scudamore.

Later in the inquiry agriculture minister Margaret Beckett is expected to appear before the committee. The final recommendations will have no legal force, but may be considered by the European Commission in drawing up new proposals for responding to such outbreaks.