Volume 16: Reference Material
7. The organisation of MAFF and DH, 1986-96
Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAFF)
The basic hierarchy
Responsibilities for BSE

The basic hierarchy

7.5 Like most Government Departments, MAFF was headed by an administrator known as the Permanent Secretary (Grade 1). The Permanent Secretary was the apex of a pyramid of units, headed by officials with increasing spans of responsibility. Several Grade 2 Commands reported to the Permanent Secretary, each made up of a number of Groups headed by Grade 3 Under Secretaries. These Groups consisted of several Divisions headed by Grade 5 Assistant Secretaries, each of which comprised a number of Branches headed by staff at Grade 7 (or, occasionally, Senior Executive Officer) level. ¹ Within MAFF, the Agricultural Development and Advisory Service (ADAS), the State Veterinary Service (SVS), and the Chief Scientists' Groups were organised on similar hierarchical lines but in ways that reflected their specialist functions.

Responsibilities for BSE

7.6 Most of the work on BSE was handled by the following parts of MAFF:

1. The State Veterinary Service (SVS) of qualified veterinary staff, headed by the Chief Veterinary Officer (CVO). Until 1987 the SVS was an integral part of ADAS. Thereafter it was managed by the CVO as a separate service, ² although the CVO retained a line management link to the Director-General of ADAS. From 1990, this link was ended when the SVS became part of MAFF's Animal Health and Veterinary Group (AHVG), an arrangement which lasted until 1994.
2. The Central Veterinary Laboratory (CVL), until April 1990 part of the SVS and thereafter a MAFF Agency. ³
3. The Animal Health Group, comprising traditional civil service generalist administrators. In 1990 this Group and the SVS were merged as the AHVG - a process reversed in 1994.

7.7 BSE was identified and described as a new disease by researchers at the Central Veterinary Laboratory located at Weybridge, Surrey, following pathological examination and surveillance work by the SVS Veterinary Investigation Service. The CVL conducted the main research into the disease, while the Veterinary Field Service of the SVS investigated individual cases and oversaw and monitored the controls subsequently imposed on animal feedstuffs and on the removal and disposal of Specified Bovine Offal (SBO). The Headquarters of the State Veterinary Service, based like the CVO at Tolworth in Surrey, advised policy-makers on the export and import of animals and animal products, and on meat hygiene and animal welfare issues.

7.8 The Animal Health Group, also located at Tolworth (although its Grade 3 head was based in London until mid-1992 ⁴), was responsible for developing policy on animal health, welfare and breeding; meat hygiene; exports and imports of animals, meat and meat products; and (until the Veterinary Medicines Directorate was set up in 1989 as a separate unit) on the licensing, distribution and control of veterinary medicines. It was also responsible for implementing many aspects of these policies - for example, by preparing (in consultation with MAFF lawyers) the Regulations giving effect to the ruminant feed ban and the SBO bans.

7.9 Other parts of MAFF became involved with BSE, to a greater or lesser extent:

• Ministers, the Permanent Secretary, the Grade 2 Director-General ofADAS, and the Grade 2 head of the Food Safety Directorate, based in Central London.
• The Chief Scientist (Agriculture and Horticulture) based in Central London, who was responsible for commissioning all MAFF-sponsored research on those topics. Until 1991 the Chief Scientist (A&H) held MAFF's research budget, from which MAFF's BSE programme was funded. ⁵ Thereafter, budgetary responsibility passed to the administrative policy groups, including the AHVG, which commissioned research as 'customers' from appropriate 'contractor' laboratories, including the CVL, with the Chief Scientist retaining oversight of the research programme as a whole. ⁶
• The Veterinary Medicines Directorate, which combined the former Animal Medicines Division with two sections of the CVL: the Medicines Unit and the Biological Products and Standards Department. The Veterinary Medicines Directorate became an Agency in April 1990. It, too, was based at Weybridge, although not at the CVL, and was responsible on behalf of Ministers for authorising and controlling the manufacture and marketing of veterinary medicines, monitoring suspect adverse reactions, surveillance of residues in meat, etc, and providing and implementing policy advice on these issues. ⁷ The veterinary medicines aspect of the BSE story is described in vol. 7: Medicines and Cosmetics.
• The Emergencies, Food Quality and Pest Controls Group based in Central London. Its Food Science Division helped in advising on the extent and manner of use in food of certain types of offal, prior to the SBO ban. ⁸ This episode is described in vol. 6: Human Health, 1989-96.