Injustice
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144. What injustice to ASU members flows from the maladministration I have identified? As I see it, it is impossible to say with absolute certainty what would have happened had Mr Dring made appropriate records on both occasions that he found welfare problems at Burnside Farm, and forwarded those to the Divisional Manager. That said, as I have already indicated above, I am satisfied that Mr Dring’s failings in this regard are not in themselves sufficient to cast doubt on the merits of his decision not to recommend that enforcement action be taken on either occasion. In the light of that, it seems to me that, even if Mr Dring had forwarded appropriate records, on the balance of probabilities the Divisional Manager would have been unlikely to have taken issue with Mr Dring’s professional judgment on the seriousness of the problems he had encountered at Burnside Farm and the most appropriate way of dealing with them. Indeed I note that, even had Mr Dring reached a different conclusion and recommended prosecution, that recommendation might not have been accepted by the LA. Furthermore, as the LA inspector said, a successful prosecution would not, in any event, have been likely to have led to the withdrawal of the brothers’ licence. All in all, therefore, I do not see that there is clear evidence to suggest that Mr Dring’s failings in this respect had an impact on the course of events.
145. As it was, conditions on the farm had apparently improved at the time of the crucial January 2001 visit, and that visit did not reveal any animal health or welfare matters that it could be claimed Mr Dring should have taken immediate action on. In the light of all that, I do not see that any injustice flowed from Mr Dring’s failure to keep and forward appropriate records, or that there can be said to be any clearly demonstrable link between those failings and the outbreak of FMD, as ASU have claimed. Nevertheless, those failings were serious ones, and I asked the Permanent Secretary of Defra what reassurance she could give me that these were isolated incidents, which did not reflect a wider failure within the SVS to follow proper procedures. In reply she assured me that Defra would be looking closely at my observations, in particular about animal health practice in this case, and considering carefully whether the shortcomings identified were peculiar to the circumstances of this case, or whether there were wider lessons for the Department to learn. In the meantime, there had already been significant changes in the structure and operation of the SVS (now Animal Health), since the events in this case. With that reorganisation had come better structural controls on field operations so that, for example, reports of field staff often contained specific information which had to be completed, and entered onto the agency’s systems, to complete a visit. That information formed part of internal reporting, and using tools such as the Local Implementation Plans operated in each division provided significantly more information to Divisional Veterinary Managers. That enhanced their ability to monitor divisional performance, and allowed them to challenge any inconsistencies, so that opportunities for detecting any incident similar to what had happened here (Mr Dring’s failure to follow proper procedures) were now significantly increased. Animal Health was also now subject to audit by the Department’s Internal Audit Division, and externally by the National Audit Office.
146. The Permanent Secretary went on to say that, in order to ensure that there was a recognised standard, checklists for inspectors had been devised to inform both farmers and Animal Health staff of the Statutory Management Requirements relating to the welfare of farmed animals, and the controls on medicine residues, and to provide a route for external feedback. Along with the training and guidance mentioned earlier, she believed that these provided a robust framework against which Animal Health staff were monitored. Looking to the future, Animal Health had embarked on a wide-ranging business reform programme which, amongst other objectives, would introduce new systems of work and information technology, which would build on the controls set out above and provide much more visibility of the activities of Animal Health’s field staff to line managers. I welcome those developments.
147. Finally, I have indicated that Mr Dring should, in my view, have taken more interest in the containers holding unprocessed swill on the hard standing. Once again, however, it is impossible to say what would have happened had he done so. Given that Burnside Farm was only inspected twice a year, it seems likely that, even if Mr Dring had told the brothers that the containers could not stand there, and had carried out a follow-up visit to check that the containers were no longer there, if the brothers had remained intent on feeding unprocessed swill, then in all probability, they would have found a way to conceal their activities.
148. In light of the above, whilst I have found that there were maladministrative failings in the inspection process of which I am critical, again I do not see that it is possible to draw any direct connection between Mr Dring’s shortcomings in this respect and the brothers’ feeding of unprocessed swill to their pigs. I do not, therefore, uphold ASU’s complaint that failures in the inspection regime effectively allowed illegal feeding activities to go unchecked, thereby leading to the outbreak of FMD and the hasty imposition of the ban on swill feeding.
