Volume 1: Findings and Conclusions
5. The animal health story
Did the provisions of the animal SBO ban matter?

468 To what extent were the shortcomings that we have described attributable to the defects in the provisions of the animal SBO ban that we identified at the outset of this section?

469 Mrs Attridge, who was head of the Animal Health and Veterinary Group which had responsibility for the animal SBO ban, and Mr Meldrum each submitted to us that improvements in the Regulations would have had no significant effect on enforcement in slaughterhouses so long as the District Councils remained responsible for this. They suggested that it was the introduction of the MHS that enabled the tightening of standards in slaughterhouses in and after 1995. This was achieved by consolidating all the Regulations into a single instrument under the Animal Health Act 1981. The MHS enforced the consolidated Regulations in the slaughterhouses and the County Councils enforced them elsewhere. Before the MHS took over, there was no practical way of ensuring that separation of SBO from other material was enforced in the slaughterhouse. Mrs Attridge added that if there had been problems in getting slaughterhouses to apply a single black stain - which there certainly had - a requirement that SBO should be marked with a separate blue stain would have been likely to have compounded those problems.

470 There is force in these points. The regime under which some 300 different councils throughout Great Britain shared responsibility for enforcing Regulations in slaughterhouses had proved to have a severe structural weakness. No changes in Regulations would have overcome that weakness. Furthermore, the District Councils were not concerned with animal health Regulations. The County Councils, which had to enforce these, had no presence in slaughterhouses. Plainly the human SBO ban and the animal SBO ban could not sensibly be consolidated into a single Order so long as this situation prevailed. Nonetheless, we believe that if the animal SBO ban had been imposed by a detailed code such as that introduced in 1995, the benefits would have been considerable. A statutory obligation to stain SBO with a distinctive stain and keep it separate at all times from all other material would have made it quite clear to slaughterhouse operators what their duty was. Meat Inspectors, EHOs and OVSs employed by the District Councils would in practice have had to have regard to that obligation in the course of enforcing the human SBO ban - indeed the terms of the human SBO Regulations could have been amended to bring them into line. The VFS would have been in no doubt as to the obligations that it was monitoring - and the distinctive stain would have helped it in its task.

471 So far as knacker's yards, hunt kennels, collection centres, transit to renderers, and rendering plants were concerned, there is no doubt that it would have been possible to impose clear and simple statutory obligations to keep SBO separate from other material. The County Councils would have been responsible for enforcing these. We are in no doubt that this would have resulted in significantly more effective enforcement and monitoring of the animal SBO ban.