BSE

Part of Opposition Day – in the House of Commons at 5:29 pm on 25 June 1996.

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Photo of Tony Baldry Tony Baldry Minister of State (Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food) 5:29, 25 June 1996

I hope that we shall be able to produce a consultation paper on the scheme next week. We shall then have to consider the orders that we would need to present to the House. There will need to be a certain amount of record checking and talking to farmers. Some farmers may have no cattle for the scheme, or just one or two, while others may have considerably more. We shall need to discuss the most effective way of bringing their cattle into the scheme. I would expect slaughtering under this scheme to start in September, but, in addition to the abattoirs and renderers being used for the over-30-month scheme, we have 12 registered BSE incinerators, which are currently being used to deal with casualty stock— largely with the backlog of casualty stock involved in the over-30-month scheme. Our capacity is becoming free, and I anticipate spare capacity in those incinerators in the earlier part of the scheme to deal with the selective cull until we embark on moves to eliminate the entire backlog.