Veterinary surveillance: Getting involved
We can all get involved in helping to improve veterinary surveillance in the UK. This can be either directly as farmers, vets or government policy makers or indirectly as consumers and taxpayers. To help us allow the Veterinary Surveillance Strategy to happen we are working with a wide range of different people.
Advisory Group
A senior advisory group, the Surveillance Group on Diseases and Infections of Animals (SGDIA) has been set up to co-ordinate the programmes of surveillance of animal health and welfare on farms. It contains representatives from the devolved administrations, the Veterinary Laboratories Agency (VLA), the Veterinary Medicines Directorate, Scottish Agricultural College (SAC), the Food Standards Agency, Department of Health and the Health Protection Agency. The SGDIA will provide direction, at a high level, for the strategy.
Programme Management Board
The Veterinary Surveillance Strategy programme of work is directed by its own Programme Management Board.
Business Assurance Groups
Four Business Assurance Groups (BAGs) have been established to help us review and plan our work. The groups have many different types of people in them including farming representatives, academics, vets, human health experts and those involved in making government policy. Group members have an interest in each of the strategy’s goals. The organisations they represent include the VLA, the State Veterinary Service (SVS), SAC, the National Farmers Union (NFU), the British Veterinary Association (BVA) and the Food Standards Agency among others. All groups also contain representatives from the devolved administrations. The role of the BAG members is to work in partnership with Government as the 10-year programme of work on the strategy is carried out and to act as the liaison between the ‘constituency’ they represent and those working to put the strategy into practice..
If you have any comments, ideas or concerns, which you would like brought to the attention of the groups, please contact us and we will pass them to the appropriate BAG member to consider. Meetings of the BAGs are held on a regular basis.
- Note of the July 2006 RADAR BAG Meeting
(94 KB) - Note of the April 2006 Prioritisation BAG
Meeting
(140 KB)
- Note of the March 2006 Collaboration BAG
Meeting
(111 KB)
- Note of the March 2006 Quality Assurance
BAG Meeting
(22 KB)
- Report of the July 2005 Joint BAG meeting
- Report of the November/December 2004 BAG
meetings
(218 KB)
- Report of the May 2004 BAG meetings
(544 KB)
- Report of the
September 2003 BAG meetings
(375 KB)
Detecting the next threat - surveillance for new and emerging diseases Meeting, 11th June 2007
A veterinary surveillance conference, 'Detecting the next threat - surveillance for new and emerging diseases', was held at Local Government House in London on 11 June 2007. Organisations and interests represented included the farming and veterinary industries, academia, Government, and the medical profession. Further information...
Pilot Veterinary Sentinel Network
The Veterinary Surveillance Strategy identified a need to expand the veterinary surveillance network. The information collected by private veterinary practitioners on animal health and welfare is of great importance in understanding the level of animal disease and its distribution. Defra currently has no formal capture of surveillance information from private veterinary surgeons, other than that obtained from samples submitted to diagnostic laboratories and ad hoc reports. At their meeting in November 2004, the Quality Assurance Business Assurance Group concluded that a pilot study on the feasibility, practicality and usefulness of a veterinary sentinel network would be a logical first step. They suggested that the pilot should be restricted to two species, cattle and pigs, and to two geographical areas.
A pilot sentinel network workshop was held in April 2005 with representatives invited from a wide range of organisations including the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons, the BVA, the SVS, the Pig Veterinary Society, the British Cattle Veterinary Association, the National Animal Disease Information Service, the pig and cattle industry, the NFU, the VLA, veterinary colleges and private veterinary practitioners.
- Report of the January 2007 pilot sentinel
network (cattle) meeting
(40 KB)
- Report of the June 2006 pilot pig
sentinel network meeting
(24 KB)
- Report of the March 2006 Sentinel
Network Meeting
(37 KB)
- Papers for Pilot Sentinel Network Workshop
April 2005
(68 KB)
- Report of the April 2005 Sentinel Network
meeting
(50 KB)
- Report of the August 2005 Sentinel
Network Meeting
(42 KB)
- Report of the November 2005
Sentinel Network Meeting
(32 KB)
Further information
- Veterinary Surveillance Strategy
- What the Veterinary Surveillance Strategy will do for you
- Progress implementing the Veterinary Surveillance Strategy
- What is Veterinary Surveillance?
- Glossary
Page last reviewed:
16 October 2006
Page last modified:
August 28, 2008