John Gummer (former Minister of Agriculture)

Gummer rejected BSE aid

Thursday 10 September 1998

JOHN Gummer refused to set up a cattle-tracking system to tackle BSE when he was Minister of Agriculture seven years ago after officials said that it was unnecessary and too expensive.

A similar system is now being perfected at more than twice the cost because Brussels refused to lift its global ban on British beef exports until an effective, computerised cattle-tracking system was in use.

Senior civil servants opposed the system, designed to trace all cattle from birth to death, because they believed in 1991 that the BSE epidemic was dying out and they did not want to raise new fears in the public mind, the BSE inquiry in London was told yesterday. Instead, the epidemic worsened and led to the March 1996 crisis and the embargo on British beef.

Now a computerised British cattle movement service at Workington, Cumbria, will cost the taxpayer £35 million to set up and run in its first year. In 1981 the ministry estimated that it would cost between £3 million and £14 million to set up and between £500,000 and £6 million a year to run.

In a draft letter to Jerry Wiggin, then chairman of the Commons select committee for agriculture, Mr Gummer said: "If it could be shown that computerised record-keeping would be a cost-effective help to us in dealing with the disease then I would want to pursue it. But I have to conclude that at this stage there are no grounds for pursuing the kind of system that your report advocated."