Volume 14: Responsibilities for Human and Animal Health
2. Identification and control of animals showing symptoms of disease
Identification of disease

2.10 A farmer faced with a condition that he did not recognise or that did not respond to a standard treatment would contact a private veterinary surgeon. The veterinarian, if unable to treat or diagnose the condition, would normally seek assistance from the nearest MAFF Veterinary Investigation Centre (VIC). ¹ As part of the State Veterinary Service (SVS) ² the VIC had access to research information and knowledge from its own databases and those of other VICs across the country, which together formed the Veterinary Investigation Service, and also from MAFF's Central Veterinary Laboratory (CVL). ³

2.11 The VICs recorded such voluntary submissions of information from farmers, made through their vets, on the Veterinary Investigation Diagnosis Analysis (VIDA) system, thus creating a database of disease knowledge. Hence, the initial recognition of a new disease remained an entirely voluntary matter for farmers and private vets until it reached the VIDA system and could be identified in an orderly and structured way. In Scotland, a similar service was offered by the Scottish Agricultural Colleges, which were independent of MAFF. ⁴

2.12 For known diseases, explicit control measures were to be applied from the moment the disease was recognised. Section 15(1) of the Animal Health Act 1981 required anyone with an animal affected by disease to keep it separate from unaffected animals and to give notice to the police that it was suffering from a disease, with all due speed. Section 88(1) of the Act stated that

. . . unless the context otherwise requires, 'disease' means cattle plague, pleuro-pneumonia, foot-and-mouth disease, sheep-pox, sheep scab or swine fever

subject to section 88(2), which empowered Ministers to extend, by Order, this definition of 'disease' to comprise 'any other disease of animals'.