To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what progress his Department has made towards its public service agreement target of a reduction of 40 per cent. in the prevalence of scrapie infection by 2010; and if he will make a statement. (181486)

The public service agreement (PSA) target was based on a 2004 model that assumed our existing voluntary ram genotyping scheme (RGS), part of the national scrapie plan, would be replaced with a compulsory scheme which was a pending EU-wide requirement. That requirement was dropped by the EU Commission at the end of 2006. A compulsory scheme has therefore not been implemented in Great Britain and we are consulting on closure of the current voluntary scheme.

The 2004 model has recently been re-run with regard to the change in the EU position and assuming that the voluntary RGS closes. It suggests that this PSA target of a 40 per cent. reduction in the prevalence of scrapie infections should nevertheless be reached in 2011.