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

2.29 The measures discussed so far deal mainly with circumstances where separation, isolation and treatment offered some prospect of saving animals affected by disease. But in many cases, no such treatment was available or effective at a cost that would be economic. Moreover, some diseases were recognised to be so contagious that it was impossible in practice to provide the necessary isolation and separation, not just of the animals involved, but of the humans tending or treating them. In these cases slaughter, of the affected animals or of entire herds, was the only option for effective disease control. Sections 31 and 32 and schedule 3 of the Animal Health Act gave the Minister power to cause the slaughter of any animal affected by specified diseases, or by any disease to which he directed that the section should apply, or of any animal suspected of those diseases, or which had been in contact with, or in a place occupied by, diseased or suspected animals.

2.30 Section 32(4) required the Minister to pay compensation for animals slaughtered under these provisions, according to scales prescribed by Orders made by him with Treasury approval. Such an Order, exceptionally for the Animal Health Act, had to be laid before both Houses of Parliament and was subject to the negative resolution procedure.

2.31 Further powers relating to slaughter and compensation were contained in section 33, which enabled the Minister to employ and pay additional inspectors, valuers and other persons in order to execute those responsibilities, ¹ and to hold animals intended for slaughter for observation and treatment. Under section 34(2), the carcasses of all animals slaughtered under those provisions belonged to the Minister, and could be buried, destroyed or disposed of as he directed. In the case of burial, the Minister could use any ground belonging to the owner of the slaughtered animal for that purpose. Finally, the Minister could make Orders under section 34(7) prescribing the way in which the value of these slaughtered animals was to be calculated, for regulating applications for and the mode of compensation, and for prescribing and regulating the destruction, burial, disposal or treatment of carcasses.

2.32 If Ministers considered it expedient to prevent the spread of a disease specified in sections 31 and 32, they could make an Order under section 35 of the Act providing for the seizure of anything, animate or inanimate, that in their view might carry or transmit disease and for its destruction, burial, disposal or treatment. This included animal carcasses, but not live animals. Section 35 also enabled Orders to be made to prescribe and regulate the destruction, burial, treatment and disposal of carcasses and anything else seized, and to prohibit or regulate the digging up of buried carcasses. It was an offence to throw or place the carcass of an animal which had died of disease or which had been slaughtered as diseased or suspected, into any river, canal, waterway or the sea, or to dig up a carcass buried by a direction of the Minister or a local authority. Compensation for the seizure of carcasses and for anything else seized under these powers was payable by the Minister subject to conditions similar to those relating to the slaughter and compensation provisions.

2.33 The powers relating to slaughter and compensation and the seizure, and compensation for seizure, of carcasses were subsequently used to deal with BSE by orders made under sections 32, 34, 35 and 36.