Celebrating 10 Years as an Agency
October 1995 saw the creation of the Veterinary Laboratories Agency (VLA) by the merger of the Central Veterinary Laboratory (CVL) and the Veterinary Investigation Centres (VIC). This was the most fundamental change in their history. This year we celebrate the 10th Anniversary of the merger and take a look back to what was happening in 1995.
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| William Waldegrave visits VLA in 1995 |
The merger was a major change and all the financial and management systems had to be harmonised, the implications of the merger had to be explained to our customers and probably the most important issue was to communicate the changes to all the members of the new Agency.
Veterinary and scientific work was carried out within three divisions: Research, Operations and Veterinary Investigation as opposed to the six Scientific Programmes that currently deliver the science.
- Although the Research Division was dominated by BSE, projects on scrapie, food borne diseases, swine influenza and tuberculosis were also ongoing and PCRs were being developed.
- The Operations Division carried out over 3 million diagnostic tests that year on Brucella, bovine leukosis, warble fly and many other diseases. Analytical Chemistry, Radiochemistry, Quality Control, Biological Reagents, Animal Services and the Lasswade laboratory were all part of this division.
- The Veterinary Investigation Division provided a range of services including monitoring and diagnosis of notifiable diseases. Over 15,000 cattle brains were examined for BSE in 1995/96. Investigations into the epidemiology of Salmonella DT104 and incidents of E.coli O157 were reported. Surveillance and animal welfare activities included problems with chlamydial infections, the isolation of two new Streptococcus suis serotypes and the introduction of Ostrich farming!
This has been an eventful ten years - but we look forward to the challenges ahead in the next ten years.
Targets set for the new Agency in 1995 had a familiar ring to them as they included:
- Recovery of full economic cost, which that year was £34.5m
- Efficiency gain of 2.5%
- Laboratory accreditation for the Radiochemistry Unit
- A satisfactory report from a visiting group.
