Farm inspections are conducted by different bodies for different reasons. Regarding DEFRA bodies, the chief executives of the Rural Payment Agency, Animal Health, Veterinary Laboratory Agency, Veterinary Medicine Directorate, Natural England, and the Environment Agency have been asked to supply the information for their agencies.
Individual local authorities will hold information on the number of visits they have carried out. A fully comprehensive reply cannot be given as a significant proportion of the information is not collected centrally. Also, there is some uncertainty about whether non-regulatory visits would come within the scope of the hon. Member's question.
The number of farm inspections carried out by Animal Health and the Veterinary Laboratory Agency are shown in the following table:
2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 Animal Health1 122,000 131,000 126,000 136,000 110,000 Veterinary Medicines Directorate2 772 587 686 535 380 1 The source for the data is incomplete and it is not possible to differentiate between inspections and testing visits. 2 Includes routine and follow up/special visits but excludes inspections for residues as these are included in Animal Health's figures.
Visits are undertaken by Animal Health staff, by local veterinary inspectors acting on behalf of the organisation, or by the Egg Marketing and Dairy Hygiene Inspectorates.
In 2007, the overall number of visits declined due to a reduction in volume of sampling visits under the National Scrapie Plan and for brucellosis.
The Veterinary Laboratories Agency does not undertake any regulatory inspections.
The number of farm inspections carried out by the Rural Payment Agency (RPA) Inspectorate from 2003-04 to 2007-08 is set out in the following table:
Number 2003-04 113,805 2004-05 211,779 2005-06 311,951 2006-07 313,869 2007-08 414,457 1 All Integrated Administration Control System (IACS) and England Rural Development Programme (ERDP) scheme inspections. 2 All IACS and ERDP scheme inspections. 3 First year of Single Payment Scheme (SPS)—includes all SPS Land Eligibility, Cross-compliance, Remote sensing follow-up, Cattle Identification Inspection and ERDP Inspections. 4 As above, plus statutory sheep and goat inspections.
In 2006-07 and 2007-08, the Horticultural Marketing inspectors who merged with the RPA Inspectorate on 1 April 2006, carried out the following inspections at the premises of glasshouse growers, market gardeners, etc.:
Number 2006 1,452 2007 1,433
Information cannot be readily gathered from a single IT system for this timeframe without incurring disproportionate cost. Animal Health have been developing its management information and hence more detailed figures are available for 2007.
Using available data, Animal Health undertook in the region of 25,000 on farm inspections in Britain in 2007. This figure includes 4,227 visits to inspect farm animal welfare (including welfare cross-compliance inspections), 12,963 inspections undertaken by the Dairy Hygiene Inspectorate (DHI) and 2,905 on farm inspections made by the Egg Marketing Inspectorate (EMI)1.
Across these three programmes, some 22,000 on farm inspections were completed annually from 2003-07.
As well as inspection visits, Animal Health carries out various types of visit to sample stock for surveillance and for disease control. Within this category, agency staff or official veterinarians2 working on its behalf undertook more than 50,000 herd tests for bovine TB in 2007 and 8,000 visits under the National Scrapie Plan (NSP).
1 DHI and EMI merged with the State Veterinary Service in October 2006 and April 2007 respectively.
2 OVs—previously referred to as Local Veterinary Inspectors (LVIs).
The number of inspections of farm animal welfare and on farm inspections performed by DHI and EMI, in 2003-07 is shown in the following table. It also shows the number of bTB herd testing visits and NSP sampling visits completed in these years.
Type of visit 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 Welfare inspection 2,879 3,201 3,419 3,849 14,227 DHI inspection 16,553 15,414 15,474 14,996 12,963 EMI inspection 2,722 3,098 2,865 3,241 2,905 TB herd test 45,120 44,794 43,627 50,327 51,221 NSP sampling 10,469 10,443 12,480 11,730 7,989 1 2007 welfare inspection visits include welfare cross-compliance inspections.
The Whole Farm Approach includes a project looking at on-farm inspections. The aim is to “join-up” inspections, bringing together as many organisations as possible that visit farms to enforce regulatory requirements or undertake routine monitoring. The project is focusing on increased sharing of inspection resource and inspection data to better target inspection activity and reduce the burden on the better performing farms.