Volume 9: Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland
Part 2: Scotland
9. Departmental responsibilities
Department of Agriculture and Fisheries for Scotland (DAFS)
Animal Health branch
Meat Hygiene branch
Food Standards branch
Livestock Industry branch
State Veterinary Service (SVS) in Scotland
Scottish Agricultural Colleges
Research bodies

9.2 The Department of Agriculture and Fisheries for Scotland (DAFS) was responsible for the agricultural and fishing industries in Scotland. Its remit included participation in negotiations on agricultural policy with the EU; the provision of financial and technical help for farmers; the supervision of research and advisory services; the administration of a variety of agricultural support schemes; the development of crofting; and the management of a large area of agricultural land that was publicly owned. ¹

9.3 In the late 1980s four branches in two divisions of DAFS were involved in BSE work. These were Division A, Branch 1 - Animal Health and Welfare; Division G, Branch 1 - Livestock Industry (including renderers); Division G, Branch 2 - Meat Hygiene and Slaughterhouses; and Food Standards (A3 - recently transferred from SHHD). By 1991 all these responsibilities had been regrouped into a single Division (A), along with the Agricultural Staff branch. They remained grouped together until 1995, when the agricultural responsibilities of the Scottish Office were combined with its environmental responsibilities to form the Scottish Office Agriculture, Environment and Fisheries Department (SOAEFD). ²

9.4 The branches all worked closely with the SVS, on which they relied for veterinary advice. DAFS staff also maintained a close relationship with local authorities which, among other things, provided a source of information about what was happening in the meat hygiene sphere.

Animal Health branch

9.5 The Animal Health branch was responsible for animal diseases, the licensing of waste food premises, protein processing, import and export of farm animals, and the import of carcasses, animal products and processed proteins. ³ The main duties of the branch were to contribute to joint policy formulation with the other UK Agriculture Departments; to ensure that Scottish livestock interests were taken into consideration in the development of EU policy; to implement controls in relation to notifiable diseases and animal welfare; and to ensure that EU measures concerning controls over the movement of animals were properly implemented and proper records maintained. ⁴ The branch reported to a Grade 5: Mr George Thomson up to January 1990, when he was succeeded by Mr Edward Davison. Dr Andrew Matheson took over the post in 1994.

Meat Hygiene branch

9.6 The Meat Hygiene branch was responsible for meat hygiene policy and legislation; hygiene standards in slaughterhouses; meat inspection; control of unfit meat; disposal of animal waste including the rendering and knackery industries; ⁵ Specified Bovine Offal/Materials controls; meat export standards; and imports of meat and meat products. It was headed by Mr Adam Rennie until 1991, when it was transferred to Mr Davison. Mr Ian Anderson, a Grade 7, was responsible for slaughterhouses within this branch between 1989 and 1996.

Food Standards branch

9.7 The Food Standards branch was transferred to DAFS from SHHD in 1987 and was responsible for the review of proposed food legislation, both domestic and European; and for food standards, and ingredient and nutrition labelling; food additives and contaminants; food safety and hygiene; and imported foods. ⁶ It was involved in the development of the Food Safety Act 1990; in a number of high-profile food safety issues of the time, including salmonella and listeria; and in coordinating a national warning system for imminent food hazards. ⁷ Food and Dairy Officers provided advice on food safety within DAFS, but medical advice continued to come from the staff of the Chief Medical Officer in the SHHD. The branch reported successively to Mr Thomson, Mr Davison and Dr Matheson. Mr Davison told the Inquiry that he was:

. . . in the position of having regular dealings with both medical and veterinary advisers - who however were themselves parts of quite separate organisations - and where zoonoses were concerned I might be receiving advice from both on the same subject. One of the priorities of my job was to try to integrate and harmonise the inputs from these two separate but related professions: this followed a recommendation from the Richmond Committee on microbiological safety of food, in 1990, which had been critical of the lack of liaison between the medical and veterinary sides in Scotland. ⁸

Livestock Industry branch

9.8 This branch was responsible for policy advice to Ministers on the livestock industry. It communicated extensively with the farming, rendering and meat products industries on BSE issues and was involved in discussion about the possibility of seeking a derogation for Scotland from the live export ban for pedigree cattle. ⁹ The policy of the Livestock Division (G) as a whole was to 'assist the industry where it could, consistent with the Government's overall policy on BSE'. ¹⁰

State Veterinary Service (SVS) in Scotland

9.9 As in Wales, there was no separate veterinary service in Scotland. Under the 1955 Transfer of Functions Order all veterinary and technical staff remained employees of MAFF. Professional veterinary advice to the Scottish Office was provided by MAFF's State Veterinary Service, headed in Scotland by an Assistant Chief Veterinary Officer (ACVO) who acted as Veterinary Adviser to the Secretary of State for Scotland. Mr Gordon Gerrand was ACVO for Scotland in 1986. His successor, Mr James Scudamore, ACVO from 1990, said that although at the time he had been a MAFF employee, he had considered his principal allegiance to be to the Secretary of State for Scotland, both for the provision of advice and for the management of the SVS in Scotland. ¹¹ Mr Scudamore was succeeded in this post in 1996 by Mr William Gardner, who had previously been his Veterinary Head of Section.

9.10 The ACVO for Scotland was in charge of three groups, two of which were headed by Regional Veterinary Officers with responsibility for the North and South of Scotland respectively. The third group was the small headquarters unit based in Edinburgh, consisting of a Veterinary Head of Section, two Veterinary Advisers and a Meat Hygiene Adviser.

9.11 The veterinary headquarters unit occupied offices adjacent to those of DAFS in Chesser House, and later Pentland House, in Edinburgh. Dr Matheson told the Inquiry that the two groups of staff were in daily contact and that relations between them were excellent. ¹² Health officials (see below) were located some distance away in St Andrew's House. Dr Rosalind Skinner (Principal Medical Officer) described her relationship with the ACVO (Mr Scudamore for most of the period of her involvement) as 'close and cordial'. He would often call in to discuss matters of mutual interest, including BSE, if he was visiting St Andrew's House. ¹³

Scottish Agricultural Colleges

9.12 In Scotland three Scottish Agricultural Colleges (the East of Scotland, North of Scotland and West of Scotland Colleges) provided educational, research and development, and certain advisory services to agriculture in Scotland. The three colleges were amalgamated into a single limited company, the Scottish Agricultural College (SAC), in 1990. SAC as a limited company was independent of DAFS, although it remained partly funded, through grant-in-aid, by that Department. SAC's relevance to the discussion of departmental responsibilities lies in its provision of the Veterinary Investigation Service in Scotland, in contrast to the situation in England and Wales, where MAFF provided this service.

9.13 SAC operated eight Veterinary Investigation Centres (VICs) ¹⁴ and contracted with MAFF to perform a variety of functions, such as disease surveillance through the VIC network; the collection of material for examination (including the removal of brains from BSE suspect animals); and the incineration of BSE-infected carcasses. ¹⁵ Like their counterparts elsewhere in Great Britain, the VICs in Scotland reported isolations of zoonotic organisms through the Veterinary Investigation Diagnostic Analysis (VIDA) system. However, in Scotland this information was also sent directly to the Communicable Disease (Scotland) Unit (see paragraphs 9.24-9.25 below) for inclusion in its weekly report. This arrangement led the Richmond Committee to observe in 1990 that the system for collating health information from human and veterinary sources worked more promptly in Scotland than elsewhere in Great Britain, and provided a fuller picture of the current state of microbiological contamination both of humans and of animals used for human food, and of any developing trends. ¹⁶

Research bodies

9.14 Scotland possessed significant animal research capacity in its agricultural colleges and institutes. A number of agricultural research institutes in Scotland carried out work for DAFS/SOAEFD under contract. Some of these also carried out work on a UK-wide basis, in particular the Rowett Research Institute in Aberdeen, and the Moredun Research Institute in Edinburgh. The special expertise of the Rowett Institute lay in nutrition and health research, while the Moredun Institute was in the lead on sheep research. Moredun had been investigating scrapie since 1925, when the Institute was established, and had provided much of the early knowledge about the disease. Dr William Martin, who was a member of the Southwood Working Party, ¹⁷ had been Director of the Institute between 1971 and 1985.

9.15 However, by 1983 all scrapie experimentation work had been transferred to the Neuropathogenesis Unit (NPU), also in Edinburgh and headed by Dr Alan Dickinson. The NPU was funded jointly by the Medical Research Council and the Agricultural and Food Research Council (AFRC). It played a significant role in advising MAFF on BSE.

9.16 The Roslin Institute was another important research organisation in Scotland, although it was not funded by the Scottish Office. Among other things, it carried out research relevant to farm animal production and was funded from a variety of sources including MAFF, the EU and industry. DAFS/SOAEFD did not fund research into BSE or other TSEs during 1986-96, ¹⁸ but was responsible for two schemes aimed at controlling scrapie. ¹⁹