Re: Consultation on a strategic review of the National Scrapie ...

Originally from: mona parr
                        
DEFRA NEWS RELEASE

NATIONAL SCRAPIE PLAN – CONSULTATION ON STRATEGIC OPTIONS TO MEET THE LONG TERM AIM OF ERADICATING SCRAPIE FROM THE NATIONAL FLOCK

 
Animal Health Minister Ben Bradshaw announced today a public consultation on strategic options for the National Scrapie Plan (NSP) in the light of EU requirements for the introduction of a compulsory genotype based breeding programme from April 2005.

Announcing the start of the consultation process, Mr Bradshaw said:

"Since its launch in 2001, over 10,000 purebred flocks have been entered into the plan's main genotyping schemes with over one million samples having been taken. This success is not only a tribute to industry's willingness to make progress itself, but also to the way in which the NSP has been developed in partnership over the last 3 years with Government, individual farmers, sheep breed societies and representative bodies such as the National Sheep Association and the National Farmers Union. This is a good example of how we intend to work under the Animal Health and Welfare Strategy"

"The need to introduce a compulsory genotype based breeding programme in 2005 has provided a timely opportunity to review and evaluate how the NSP's vision
– to eradicate TSEs from the national flock and thereby protect public health
– can continue to be met and how the EU requirements can be implemented in Great Britain. "

"This consultation exercise provides a further opportunity for all our partners to help develop a sustainable strategy for the NSP which best suits our varied and diverse sheep industry and critically one which delivers positive public and animal health benefits by reducing and eventually eradicating scrapie infection from the national sheep flock".

Under these proposals, all purebred flocks which sell homebred rams for further breeding, of which a large proportion are already participating in the voluntary NSP, will be subject to the rules of the compulsory breeding programme.

Notes for editors

1. Scrapie is a fatal neurological disease of sheep. It has been present in the national flock for over 250 years, but is not considered to be transmissible to humans. There is a theoretical risk that BSE is present in sheep in the UK, masked by scrapie, although it has not been found occurring naturally. The National Scrapie Plan addresses the theoretical possibility of BSE being present in sheep.

2. The National Scrapie Plan for Great Britain involves a voluntary, long-term programme of breeding for genetic resistance. It encourages participating flock owners to breed from and use scrapie resistant sheep.

3. Commission Decision 2003/100\EC1 sets minimum requirements for the introduction of EU-wide genotype based breeding programmes, including the slaughter or castration of VRQ rams and movement restrictions on ewes of known VRQ genotype. These minimum requirements which Member States may choose to exceed apply on a voluntary basis from 1 January 2004 but will become compulsory from April 2005.

5. The consultation period expires on 13 October 2004.

6. This consultation document is published on the internet at www.defra.gov.uk/corporate/consult/nsp-stratreview/index.htm. The NSP website can be found at www.defra.gov.uk/nsp.

7. The National Scrapie Plan is kept under regular review, in the light of scientific and other developments.
                        

Originally from: mark purdey
                        
Hi,

Yea, I think these civil servants run these so called consultation reviews with the interested parties,etc, merely so they can be seen to be democratic, as well as providing a kind of protection if things go wrong in the future; eg; the truth coming to light in some way.

They tend to run these reviews with the more unpopular, 'batty' schemes which they ( rightly ) feel may run the risk of showing up to be flawed in the years to come – just like this national scrapie plan ( NSP). This style of consultation kind of betrays their own shakiness and uncertainty in what they are trying to do. But history shows that they have never acted on anything that has been raised from these reviews.

My experience is that these autocratic individuals take no notice of what anyone says anyway. The feedback from the consultation is merely filed away in some moth eaten vault as a future safeguard which provides evidence that they did consult 'widely' , were democratic, etc. This acts as a means of appeasing any awkward questions that might arise from opposing forces in the future as a result of their ineptitude, or negligence as is so often the case.

The problem here is that no one knows anything about the National Scrapie Plan outside of the government – except the poor sheep famers who have found themselves victim to this final farcical solution. And what kind of political clout have "mere" sheep famers got in the modern techno-driven world anyway ? They have been totally disempowered by the present government.

The officials managed to keep the NSP out of the limelight by downplaying their whole intentions and categorising the whole exercise as a kind of exclusive, elitist black and white operation that had to be enacted. They padded the whole thing up in pseudo science and then surreptitiously slipped it through the system on days when major popular news stories were dominating the mediascene.

In fact, the actual success of the NSP getting passed through parliament, largely hinged on the fact that a very influential key Livestock guy on the NFU stood to make millions ( and I mean MILLIONS ) through selling the electronic genetic identity tags that are all part and parcel of this scrapie fiasco. If there was no NSP, then there would be no need for his tags. And furthermore, the single Lord who lobbied for the NSP in the House of Lords turned out to be making a major slice of his income out of marketing "quaranteed scrapie-free" breeding rams !!! I think that it was only he and three other peer chums ( eg; who supported him ) that had been motivated to turn up in the House of Lords on the day of the vote for compulsory scrapie slaughter. This had obviously controlled the outcome of the vote – not a very democratic vote that day.

Its sick , how the modern democratic system provides loopholes through which the vested interests of a mere one or two well positioned individuals can skillfully and immorally manipulate against the best interests of the millions of people in their country – and , in this case, against the long term interests of the entire sheep farming population.

Another good example involves the pressure that is currently been put upon the Canadian government and farming community for live animal testing for BSE
– despite, in real terms, the country only having experienced two cases of BSE in total. A couple of pharmaceutical companies have seen the lucrative potential of marketing live BSE tests for every cow in Canada ( at 10 dollars per cow ) , and so the 'better looking' so called scientists on their payrole have been unleashed onto the world to deliver a flashburst of sharp suited, first class hotel seminars in order to scaremonger the media and high ranking government officials into buying their live test. Conference attendees find themselves presented with a bogus array of predictions of a massive 'black death' epidemic of BSE and vCJD in the years to come if they do not listen to their sound scientific wisdom and purchase their testing NOW . Abit like what happened here in the UK when the government gave away four million of our taxes to Professor Roy Anderson ( or is he Sir Roy Anderson by now ? ) to manacure the statistics so that it looked like we were going to get an epidemic of vCJD that attained a crisis of biblical proportions. I am amazed that Anderson is still in business on any level at all, particularly since his TSE forecasts were totally wrong and that he got kicked out of Oxford Uni for smearing one of his colleagues with a sex allegation. The government just seem to give him more money to cover up his former aberrant predictions, so he can churn out yet more aberrant predictions which provide no useful service to anyone or anything on this planet, besides sidetracking the money away from spending on bombs! Well, I suppose it all betrays who government oficials are in bed with.

 Basically, it all boils down to the fact that a handful of corporate scientists need a hyperinfectious BSE-vCJD melt down hypothesis in order to make their living – but, in countries like Canada, it is all at the expense of the livelihoods of the half of the population whose income is rooted upon agriculture. But does the world really need their useless test anyway ????? No way I say. The only safeguard against BSE is to clean up our radioactive metal waste NOW, and watch the health and safety aspects of our technological processes more carefully in future.

We live in very undemocratic times. Until we get some spin-free thinking, ethical journalists of sound integrity back on the national newspapers again, government officials and , more importantly, their corporate lobbyists will increasingly get away with launching virtually any legal vehicle that suits their own autocratic agenda . They just couch the wording of the Acts that they devise in a way that will quarantee that their proposals will slip through to the statute book with minimal opposition . For instance, in respect of the NSP , they just have to raise the emotive issue of all of the children who have died of vCJD as a result of scrapie ( despite being disproven ), and the uninformed, gullible ministers will give it the nod.

Best Wishes,

Mark Purdey