I am today announcing publication of a document inviting views on the next steps on sharing responsibility and costs for animal health and welfare.

Better animal health and welfare is important for our livestock, their owners, public health, society, and the rural economy. As recent events have shown animal disease outbreaks can be costly to farmers and the livestock industry, to the wider economy and to the taxpayer. The costs are not just financial but also the disruption and uncertainty caused while we have worked together to bring outbreaks under control.

The Animal Health and Welfare Strategy for Great Britain (2004) set out our vision for the future. Partnership working and a clear understanding of roles and responsibilities are key elements in achieving that vision.

The Responsibility and Cost Sharing Programme is central to delivering this. The aim is to make joint working between industry and government a reality: with joint decisions on how to prevent, control and eradicate animal diseases using our joint resources and skills. The close partnerships involved in tackling the recent foot and mouth and bluetongue disease outbreaks, are excellent demonstrations of how industry is able and ready to take on greater responsibility and play a more active role in managing disease risks.

The Government wish to develop and strengthen this partnership approach. This consultation is an important part of the process for developing the right structures and mechanisms for doing so and seeks views on a range of options. First, it discusses ways to share responsibility between Government and industry. The questions here are what decisions livestock keepers and industry as a whole are best placed to deal with; and how best to organise joint decision making with Government where this is needed.

Secondly, the document looks at the principles for deciding how costs can be shared equitably. The Anderson inquiry into the 2001 foot and mouth outbreak highlighted the need for sharing disease control costs with those involved: those who benefit should contribute. There is undoubtedly a need to redress the current imbalance. But jointly owned and funded animal health disease controls can also deliver wider economic benefits, public health and other public goals. Therefore, it is right that the public, as taxpayers, should also pay an appropriate share of the costs.

Thirdly, it considers what funding mechanisms would encourage and incentivise public and private sector interests to work together to manage risks better and deliver outcomes more efficiently. We wish to encourage behaviour that leads to better biosecurity, and compliance with cost effective risk reduction measures, making more use of non-legislative alternatives to regulation, and with a greater focus on incentives rather than penalties and enforcement.

Lastly, some specific proposals are put forward for the withdrawal or reduction of public subsidies for certain measures that concern BSE in cattle and scrapie in sheep. These would not affect the controls that protect public health, which will remain firmly in place.

The content of this consultation has been shared with the UK Consultative Forum on Responsibility and Cost Sharing and the England Implementation Group for Animal Health and Welfare. In the light of this consultation and further work by the forum the Government will be developing detailed proposals for further consultation next year.

These changes should lead to better risk management, improved decisions, more efficient delivery; and a fairer, transparent distribution of costs between industry and government, and between businesses within the industry.

This consultation concerns England. I am also discussing these issues closely with ministerial colleagues in other parts of the UK, with the aim of developing common policies that recognise the challenges posed by animals and their diseases and movements across administrative borders from livestock enterprises spread across the UK, especially as Great Britain is recognised as a single epidemiological unit for animal disease.