Key areas of activity and achievement
As SVS we were charged with a number of targets. Below is a list of our acheivements in our key areas of activity.
Managing exotic disease outbreaks
- Successfully responded to seven exotic animal disease outbreaks including three cases of avian influenza
- Investigated 214 reports of suspected notifiable exotic animal disease including avian influenza, Foot and Mouth and rabies (2005-06 184 reports).
- Extended an annual programme of reviews and exercises to test and evaluate our emergency response preparedness.
Animal health and welfare
- Bovine TB – tested 5.6 million cattle and responded to over 3,600 bTB incidents.
- Welfare – conducted over 6,600 farm welfare inspections, including 1,649 following complaints received from members of the public. Undertook 1,406 visits to livestock markets to advise on sale days.
- Scrapie – genotyped and electronically tagged over 509,000 sheep, investigated 200 reports of suspected scrapie on-farm and extended the voluntary contracts of more than 6,500 member flocks in the National Scrapie Plan.
- BSE – dealt with 195 suspected cases on-farm.
- Live exports – facilitated the resumption of live-cattle exports, following the lifting of the EU beef export ban.
- Avian influenza – undertook wild bird surveillance as part of precautions for avian influenza.
- Began work on developing our role as the Competent Authority for Cross Compliance in respect of the Single Payment Scheme.
Developing the Organisation
- Merged with Dairy Hygiene Inspectorate on 1 October 2006, bringing the responsibility for inspecting the standard of hygiene in the raw milk supply, on-farm and at dairies.
- Prepared for merging with the Egg Marketing Inspectorate and the Wildlife Licensing and Registration Service, (which occurred on 1 April 2007) and consequential re-branding of agency as Animal Health.
This information is available as part of the Annual Report, which can be found on our publication pages