 Welcome to the 15th meeting of the rule of affairs and islands committee in 2023. Before we begin, can I remind those members using mobile devices to turn them to silent? This morning we have apologies from Karen Adam and I welcome Emma Harper, who is attending in Karen's place. Our business today is consideration of the Tuberculosis Scotland order 2023. Just to remind everybody, we weren't supposed to be meeting today but we had some questions over this order last week, so we're fortunate to have Sheila and Louise with us today at short notice just to clarify some questions that arose when we briefly looked at this. So I do welcome Sheila Vos, the chief veterinary officer from the Scottish Government, and Louise Cameron, who's the policy officer for disease control branch of the Scottish Government. We've got a few questions we'd like to ask, but first of all I'll just kick off and if you could tell us what the current situation with TB is in Scotland. We've recently completed the stats for last year and the good news is that we will retain our officially TB free status. There was a particularly nasty breakdown last year in a herd that had sent animals to a number of other herds, which then tested positive, but we know where it came from. We have traced it and, fortunately, the position is not as bad as we feared it might be. That doesn't mean that we should be complacent, but we will retain our status for another year. Although we're officially TB free, that doesn't mean that we have no cases. It means that it's a low and stable incidence. So, in a normal year, we have somewhere between 10 and 15 cases within herds. It doesn't matter how many animals in the herd are affected, it's the number of herds that counts. How often are herds in Scotland tested? It varies. One of the benefits of being officially free is that we're able to exempt some herds from testing subject to a risk assessment. The standard is the minimum level for countries affected with TB, but our free status means that a lot of herds in particularly remote and rural areas, islands, have been exempted because they don't buy in very much. They send a significant proportion to slaughter and they're small, so their risk factors are small. Can you give us an indication? We're disease free. Is that the norm, if you look at Europe, how many countries? What's the sort of countries with TB and countries that are disease free? It's exceptional that we're disease free. Within the UK, the other three constituent members are struggling with pretty serious bovine TB problems. I heard yesterday that in Northern Ireland the herd incidence has gone up to almost 11 per cent, whereas we're talking about that number of herds in an average year. England has significant problems concentrated in some areas. The comment from their CVO yesterday was that their free areas are getting worse, but their affected areas are getting better. It's a mixed picture. Across the rest of Europe, some countries have serious problems, France and Italy, for example, and the Republic of Ireland, whereas there are others, particularly the Scandinavian countries, that have a small incidence. We should be proud of our TB free status and look to protect it. It's valuable for a variety of reasons, partly for reputation and trade purposes, but partly because not having to test every herd every four years. It saves farmers a heck of a lot of time and effort, as well as government. I want to say a wee bit more about the reasons for amending regulations, so that process that you went through and the reaction of stakeholders as you went on your way in doing that. The legislation had been amended a number of times since it was brought in, so we were advised that it should be consolidated to make it easier for people to read and to understand. However, as we were going through that process, there were things that we had learned from our experiences over the past few years, but also changes that had been made in other parts of the UK that strengthened our provisions. It seemed anomalous that, with so much more to lose, some of our provisions were less than in England or Wales particularly. We had a full consultation. It was out for 12 weeks. We publicised it widely. We didn't get a vast number of responses. It was, I think, 19. Having said that, that was more than the previous one, and it did include responses from all the big organisations covering producers, so the national farmers union, which covers approximately 60 per cent of cattle holdings, but probably nearer 90 per cent of cattle in Scotland, because the big players are members, the Scottish Beef Association responded, the British Veterinary Association responded. It is a small number, but it was quite a large number of member bodies, which we think is comforting to get that. By and large, they were supportive of what we were doing. There were a couple of areas that we consulted on that did not get general approval, and we took them back out again in response to consultation responses. However, people recognise that the TB-free status is something that they want to keep. It is very important to them, and they want to do what they can to maintain that. You mentioned the situation in England. I wonder if you could clarify in general terms which areas of England we are primarily talking about here. It is particularly the south-west of England. The area is Gloucester, Devlin, but also creeping up the Welsh marches, and Cheshire is something of a hotspot now. There have been clusters in Cumbria previously. There are areas that are not badly affected around East Anglia, but to an extent that reflects lower cattle density there. Thank you. This is a resupplement. You said that the Welsh Government is saying that where there are good areas, there are getting worse, and bad areas are getting better. Do they have movement restrictions between infected areas and uninfected areas? Not to the same extent that we do. That would explain the spread. In part, it could also be outward creep from an infected premises. It is an infectious disease like so many others. The respiratory route is one way of spread, so cattle in the same airspace can spread the disease outward. They also have a problem with wildlife, and wildlife do not respect farm boundaries, so they tend to move out and, unfortunately, will sometimes take disease with them. As a nurse, I am always interested in infection control and prevention. Covid has been something that has been really able to educate people about how we transmit infection. I am wondering about Cumbria and the movement of cattle from one side of the border to the other. There are negative results or changes from the current 60 to 30 days as far as movement. How do farmers in England know that we have changed processes in Scotland? Is that a concern that we have? They already know that we are consulting on it and the legislation is likely to come in. We publicise it quite widely through industry bodies such as the National Farmers' Union, through vet practices and make their farmers aware of it. There is a catch-up so that, if people do it wrongly, our movement systems will flag that up and we can play catch-up when they get here and retest animals that are required to be in isolation. It is not perfect. We need to get the word out. I appreciate anybody's help to do that, but we are working quite hard to make sure that everybody knows. Specifically, markets and places where animals are going through have been targeted for communication. The two farmers that I spoke to were very well informed and quite welcoming of the changes in the consolidation of regulation. They did not seem concerned, so that is quite welcome. In response to reducing the compensation down to 95 per cent, there were mixed views in terms of the consultation responses. You have mentioned a number of the respondees, but a number of them said that it could be a blunt tool. They needed clearer guidance with regards to isolation. I wondered whether you could reassure the farming sector of why you made that decision, because it was also noted that the measure could have an impact on small farms and crofters. Absolutly. The first thing to say is that it would affect a tiny number of people and they have controlled themselves over isolation. What we found recently, one particular outbreak, was that the farmer was not isolating cattle and we believe that that was leading to on-going spread through the herd because we needed to take out a significant number of animals to slaughter, but it takes a week or 10 days to organise that and, by not isolating, it took longer to clear the herd at the end. That is the first point. The second point is that it is not designed to be punitive. It is much more intended to focus minds and to remind people of the requirement. We have always had the provision that we could prosecute if people did not properly isolate, but that was a very blunt tool and relied on data gathering and the court system and things, so it did not work terribly well. To be honest, nobody would have their compensation reduced by 95 per cent because they would get either the compensation that we give them for the value of the animal or the salvage value of the animal, which is what the meat processors pay when it goes to slaughter. Although it says 95 per cent, the chances are nobody would end up there. Of 11 outbreaks a year, probably we have seen one in the past five years who has not complied, so it is a tiny number that we are talking about. We would also make sure APHA colleagues who serve the restrictions and require isolation that it is discussed at the time what appropriate isolation is, so there is no dubiety. It is not intended to get people, it is intended to encourage compliance. As part of the legislative changes, we have brought in a definition for isolation, and we did that alongside the policy. It was unanimous in the consultation that had support that farmers and other respondents to the consultation would like a definition of isolation. That is something that we have included in the legislation to make it very clear what the requirement is and what the expectation is of farmers. Like Sheila says, APHA will work closely alongside the farmers to help them fulfil those requirements. That is very helpful. I just want to press the piece on the isolation because that is helpful that there is a definition. How do you prove that a farmer has not isolated? What if you say that, in terms of the salvage value and the market value, that it will not be 95 per cent? What if we have a significant outbreak and farmers are in a position what could happen to these regulations to ensure that farmers are supported rather than penalised for something that is beyond their control? It should not be beyond their control because we are not asking farmers to isolate reactors from other reactors. We are asking them to isolate reactors infected animals from animals that have tested negative. There are a variety of ways in which that can be done. It may be housing the group of reactors or it may be separating out the clean cattle depending on the numbers affected. However, it will be done in consultation with farmers. Reactors are detected by a vet on the farm reading the skin results and that time will issue the notice requiring isolation and will talk through. If necessary, visit the different parts of the farm and agree how it can work best. How can it be proved that that individual did not isolate? With difficulty, they would need to be caught not isolating at a subsequent visit. However, people who have moved animals around know that it is not simple to go and grab a few and bring them in or put them out. It is unlikely that people would play the system hugely to have them in with the others most of the time and then bring them back in for an inspection or because somebody was coming up the road. It is not perfect, you are absolutely right, but it will err in favour of the farmer rather than in favour of government. I want to make another point. When Government consults, as you quite rightly said, there was not a huge number, but the number that did contribute to the consultation responses were significant in the industry. There was not a conclusive support for that. There was 30 per cent, 30 per cent, 30 per cent, but people did not. There was a do support, don't support and not responded. From the Government's point of view, this particular part of the order has not been conclusive, but it is basically a policy that you have decided. It is a policy that we consulted on with a lot of others. Where are those responses? I have trailed and looked for those responses. I can't find any that were not in that consultation and that was difficult enough to find. The formal consultation is only one part of the process. There was a lot of work with Farmers Unions, the Beef Association and the Scottish Dairy Cattle Association in advance of putting the consultation together. The consultation is a process, the final part of it. How can a committee understand why a Government is doing something if we do not get full sight and understanding of those particular responses? Because all we are seeing is 19 responses where on this particular issue half of the people disagreed or a third, but a third did not respond. It is impossible to provide written evidence of all the conversations and all the scoping work that took place in advance of writing the consultation. We are somewhat at the mercy of people who choose to respond to a consultation, but I would come back to the people who responded positively, covered significantly over half the cattle population in Scotland. The NFU, for example, covered roughly 60 per cent of cattle keepers, but that equates to approximately 90 per cent of cattle. The fact that they were positive goes a long way to suggest that the majority of people out there are positive, but we cannot say absolutely for definite because, short of asking every individual cattle keeper, we are going to have to rely on organisations to have done the work with their members. I appreciate that and thank you convener for taking the time. I still have concerns about small farms and crofters. I still have concerns about the potential that we will not always be in this fortunate position. I understand the measures that you are taking and I support the other measures. I just, for the reasons that I have stated, feel uncomfortable about this particular issue. I was just going to say that we did consult also on the fact that if you did not isolate a reactor, potentially the compensation should be reduced for anything that subsequently came down with disease. That is one of the provisions that we dropped in response to what came back. So, what is going through or what is proposed is much less than it could have been in response to feedback, so it is not that we have not listened. I have got Rhoda Grant, Christine Grahame and Alice Rallana. Given that in crofting counties a lot of animals use common grazing, so different crofters use the same area to graze their cattle. I am wondering what the impact is. Obviously, someone goes out and gives advice to the crofter or farmer as to how to isolate, but if they did not, unlikely that the neighbours would not be aware that there was something happening, but in the strange occurrence that they might not and their cattle are still moving about with the infected cattle, would they be badly penalised given that they had not done something wrong, they just did not have that information and somebody else had put them at risk? No, we would only be looking to take action on people who had physically been told to isolate and who then chose not to. The other thing to say is that in crofting communities, TB is exceptionally rare. Most of the outbreaks that we get are in the south-west of Scotland, among dairy farmers, not exclusively, but a large percentage of them are there. We also get a few in the north-east because of cattle density and there is very good evidence to show that herd size is a significant risk factor. People who keep less than, say, 25 cows have a very low risk of getting TB in the first place. It is a disease that spreads well in closed areas, close nose-to-nose contact, a bit like Covid, which has already been mentioned. It is airborne, so lots of animals in the same airspace are likely to spread it. Spreading it out at pasture is much less common, particularly with the low densities that we are talking about in the crofting communities. Christine Grahame. I understand about compensation. How much money are we talking about on market value at the time? How does it work? It is market value, but there is a cap to it. We still use a system of valuers, so somebody from the local market will go out and value the cattle based on how they look, what their production records are, whether they have got a calf at foot, whether they are in calf, what their breeding is. That is the level of compensation that we normally use, up to a cap of £2,500. I believe that it is £5,000 for non-pedigree and £7,500 for pedigree. It has gone up. That is a significant amount of money over and above that. That is a 100 per cent figure. It is 50 per cent if it is unclean. I am trying to understand the money that goes back to the farm. I am trying to say that it is compensation, as I understand it, not a fine. No, no. The 95 per cent that has been dropped was more a fine. When we choose to slaughter an animal, we pay compensation to the farmer for the value of that animal. If it is a £5,000 animal, he will get £5,000 for it, provided it has been isolated and it is clean when it goes to slaughter. He should not lose out on that. If that farmer has chosen not to follow the advice and has the animal out and about, what we are saying is that he will not get the £5,000. He will get a small percentage of that, which realistically will be what the animal gets from slaughter, which is likely to be £1,500-2,000. In general terms... Of course, it is 50 per cent. That is a 50 per cent reduction. The 50 per cent is if the farmer sends an unclean animal to slaughter. Legislation for food safety is that animals going to slaughter must be clean. They should not be caked in shit, basically. The meat hygiene service already has the powers to discard unclean animals because there is food safety risk. What we are doing is sharing that risk with the farmers. What we have found was very occasionally that farmers thought, oh well, we will get the compensation, so we do not need to send them clean. That is an attempt to encourage people to do what they would be doing anyway, which is for human health, but also for animal welfare purposes. It is not something that we would intend to use regularly, and it is something that is done in the other UK administration. We were behind the curve with this one. I am just interested in the figures. I did not have much money that we are talking about. I am glad that you have clarified the clear animals. My first reading was that the TB was not necessarily the trigger for that, and it was a reduction anyway. I could not quite understand why there was any compensation for animals that are sent to slaughter that are not clean. You have touched on that already, but you are essentially saying that the Scottish regulations are now going to be similar to those in England, or we will catch up with those in England, and presumably they will be broadly similar to those in the EU as well, are they? The changes that we are making bring us back into line with the EU and also with the WHOA, which is the World Organization for Animal Health Code. For a number of years, after we got our officially TB-free status, our controls were over and above. Over time, they have slipped behind, so most of what we are doing is bringing us back up to the same level as everybody else. I am intrigued by some of the conversations that you were having there between yourself and Rachel Hamilton when you were talking about the potential for a farmer choosing not to isolate infected cattle. As you know, my background is in livestock. I could never dream of allowing infected animals to go back into a herder, back into a flock. How many instances of farmers not isolating what they know to be an infected animal would you ever get? Probably two in the 12 years that I have been doing this job. It is tiny. It is a tool to encourage and to make sure that those who perhaps are not as assidious as yourself think a bit more about it. This is for the record. I just want to be clear on the whole process, and it might be helpful for anybody who is listening into this session. If I was a dairy farmer in the south of Scotland, as I was, I decided to buy some cattle from Devon, which is an area that has high incidence of TB. What is the process that I would have to go through now? What will the process be once the legislation comes into force? The only change is that if you are buying animals from a high-risk area now, the last test will be valid for 60 days. To buy an animal in the middle of May, it could effectively have been tested in the middle of March. What we are doing is reducing that period, because A, it has changed internationally, but B, the longer from the last test, the more chance there is that it has become infected since it was tested. Shortening the window means that there is less chance of bringing infected animals in. They will still have to be post-movement tested once they get to Scotland to try to make sure that anything that has been infected between the test and the move is caught before it spreads disease around Scotland. Rachael Hamilton touched on the levels of compensation and on whatever. We are not clear why people were for some of the proposals and policies that they were against. What is unclear to me is that the ones that were against the current policy did not want to go further. Should there be more emphasis put on individuals to try to avoid buying cattle from highly infected areas at all cost? There is no compensation. If I was good to go down to Devon, I would be aware that I was taking a risk. If I were to bring back an animal, why should I get compensation when potentially I am putting it at the whole health status of the Scottish herd at risk? Was there any consultation response that came back and suggested that the Scottish Government should go further? I am not sure that there were formal responses. I think that we often get feedback from some individuals and some organisations that we should go further, but we need to take into consideration what is fair and what we are seeing in other countries do in making sure that we are not taking things too far. As you can appreciate, we are trying to make some changes to compensation today and the kind of challenge that we receive on the back of that. It is quite emotive for a lot of people as well, so we need to take into consideration how far is too far. You are absolutely right if you are purchasing cattle from high-risk areas that present a higher risk. At the heart of all of those changes, we have artificially TB-free status. When we have considered all of those policies, we are thinking about how we can protect that officially TB-free status and what is in the best interest of the farmers in the country and to stop spreading any kind of disease coming in. We take that very seriously. We have made it as easy as we can for people to understand the status of cattle that they are buying so that they can go on to websites and check the status of a herd. Obviously, if the herd is under restriction, they cannot buy the animals, but if it was released from restriction last week, they can find that out in a fairly easy manner and decide for themselves if it is a risk that they want to take, recognising that it will have to have been tested, which may add to the cost, and when it gets to Scotland, it will have to be tested again at their expense. I suppose that the nature of the secondary legislation is that if things were to ramp up in other nations, you could come back with further restrictions or reductions in compensation or penalties if you thought that would help to preserve our status. It is a fluid situation. We do not want to be disproportionate in the action that we take but, equally, we do not want to encourage people to do things that risk something that is valuable. We should be proud in Scotland that we have TB-free status. When I am thinking about biosecurity, it is about being aware of how diseases spread and what practical measures can be implemented to reduce spread. I am thinking about other bovine diseases such as Unes, for instance, so TB is not the only one. My perception is that farmers are very aware of how diseases are transmitted, what they need to do to prevent it, and isolation is part of it. How do you perceive the attitudes of the farmers? I think that they are doing a great job and we should go back to that word and say that we should be proud of our producers in Scotland. How do you feel about that? The vast majority are doing the right thing. There are a small number who do not take it seriously because either they do not have the information or because they have inherited a system from a father or grandfather and they have never felt the need to do it. However, we are getting the information out that biosecurity is not about single diseases. What they do to prevent TB will help against BVD, what they do about Yoni's will help for other diseases, what they do about control of parasites will have knock-on consequences. We are generally promoting biosecurity, but not just for one disease. Beatrice Wishart. You have already touched on the percentage reductions in compensation, explained quite well, I think. I just wonder if you could explain how the Government decided on the actual levels of compensation. The levels of reduction. The unclean cattle is similar to what is happening elsewhere. The 95 per cent was a figure that came up in discussion with farmers unions and others prior to consultation because one of the things that we get regularly are calls from people to do more to protect the status. It was not a random number, but it was a number that was drawn in consideration with them, recognising that it is unlikely that anybody would ever have that level of reduction because the salvage value will almost always be greater. That is helpful. On the issue of animal cleanliness, the Scottish Beef Association and IAAS noted that it should be—animal cleanliness should be assessed on the farm, not the abattoir, because once animals are loaded, the farmer or keeper loses control of the cleanliness. I wonder if you could give your response to that. Yes, but the sort of problems that we are talking about are not somewhat done from a lorry. We are talking about animals that have clarts, as the word I would use, and tags to their skin that have been there for months and months. There is a small element, but generally animals that get dirty in transport stand in the larridge for 12 hours when they arrive and they are cleaning up again by the time they go for slaughter. Animals that have been dirty on farm for weeks or months cannot do anything to change. That is a different thing. I think that the official approach will have to have an appendix with some of these rural terms. We are all smiling because I have not heard that word for quite some time. Ariane Burgess. Thanks, convener. It is nice to hear a Scots word coming in, Clart. Thanks for coming this morning. It is great to hear that Scotland has this TB-free status, and clearly what you are working on is really about protecting cattle farmers with this SSI. I was good to hear also this piece that you are focusing on, the biosecurity aspect that we are getting away from a single disease approach and actually the whole system, but I think that one of the reasons that we asked to have this evidence session was around the engagement process, and you have touched upon that already in previous answers around the fact that NFUS was one of the respondents and they represent 60 per cent of the cattle keepers and 90 per cent of cattle in Scotland. Even though the numbers were low, they represent a great deal of people who work with cattle. I think that we would like to hear a little bit more maybe about the engagement process and also on-going afterwards, how do you keep that relationship going? One of the things that I do is have quarterly, roughly, stakeholder meetings. That is where officials from my team get together with representatives of the various different bodies that we work with. NFUS is Scottish SPCA, the Institute of Auctioneers, Aids, Meat Holds, Sailors and Scottish Beef Association. There are usually about 30 different groups represented there. It includes the vets. We use that as a policy development forum so that we talk to them well in advance of coming forward with proposals about what they would like, what would help them, and we sound ideas off so that we can have that blue-sky idea of what if we reduce compensation for dirty cattle or whatever it is. There is that discussion in that forum to gather the feeling of the industry across the piece before we ever put pen to paper about it. That will continue. The standard is quarterly. During Covid, we were meeting weekly in Avian Flu. It has been up, it has been down, but quarterly is an absolute minimum. The intention is that we are as open as we can be to talk about what is coming up, what is on the radar and to get feedback about what is concerning the industry as well. That is very helpful to hear that they are involved in almost co-designing policies that are coming forward. Does the quarterly meeting group have a name so that we can understand? It is the animal health and welfare stakeholder group. You are very welcome to come along at any time that you want. No questions might have been asked already about guidance. You have answered questions about guidance on what isolation means. Rachel, you touched on that, unless you have anything further to say. No, I will bring down nothing to ask. One final question from me is going back to the point that Rachel raised earlier on about what if we get a flare-up of infection, how is that going to affect compensation, etc. Given the rigorous scrutiny that there is in the diligence of the pharma community, how likely is a flare-up of TB to happen in Scotland? My crystal ball is a bit cloudy. It depends. It is one of those interesting ones. It depends to an extent on pharma behaviour. I would much rather people weren't buying animals in from areas with TB, but I recognise why some people do. It depends on our surveillance systems to pick it up quickly, and it depends on when it is picked up, the appropriate control measures being put in place, such as isolating animals. I think that it is unlikely that we would get an acute flare-up, but it only takes one farm, as we saw last year. One farm, with disease that had probably been there for a year or 18 months undetected, had seeded disease to another. I think that it was 18 farms that we traced, of which seven or eight were positive. It is not impossible. What matters is that when we find it, we deal with it robustly and quickly. Part of what we do is tracing backwards and getting an animal that is infected. We immediately go back to find out what it has been in contact with to try to determine where it may have come from, which involves testing a range of herds. We also look at anything that has left that farm and test them and the herds that they are in. It is not impossible, but it is unlikely, probably, as much as I can say. Okay, thank you. Rachel Hamilton. I have scattered on questions for you. First of all, just going back to the current measures that are in place, I presume that anyone breaking TB rules would have their farm payment reconsidered. Secondly, they could potentially be subject to a fine. Why aren't those measures that are currently there sufficient? Yes, it can be taken into account for cross-compliance. It's not often done because it rarely happens that people don't follow the measures. It is exceptional. By the time we get there, one of the farms that didn't comply actually lost about 90 per cent of his stock in the end, so he didn't have a lot left to lose by that point. That was the first point. I'm sorry, I've forgotten what the second point was. Is this fine up to £5.30? Yes, the fine we can use, but that relies on a court case and taking up time getting it through the procurator, deciding whether it's in the public interest or not. What we found recently is that procurators like everybody else are very busy people and sometimes it seems quite small change in comparison to rapes, murders and the other things that they're dealing with, so it's not that we haven't tried to use it, but it sometimes proves difficult to take it through. Just on the point that the BCVA had said that they need more detail regarding the ability to resource and carry out this approach, I presume that you're aware of that. What would constitute a herd that wasn't subject to pre- or post-movement checks? I don't mean that in a ridiculous way. I mean, why would somebody not have to go through that? If they come from a low incidence area, so Scotland is a low incidence area, so we don't require pre- and post-movement checks of cattle moving between farms in Scotland or from the low incidence area in England, where the number of breakdowns is very low, so from East Anglia, from Northumberland, they don't have to have those tests. If the animal comes from a high incidence area where TB is endemic, they have to be tested before and after. If they come from a high incidence area to a low incidence area in England, then they will still be post-movement tested unless they've been tested in the low incidence area of England. It's quite complicated. If there are 10,000 cattle moving into Scotland every year, how many of those are coming from high-risk areas? 2,000, maybe? Right, so that's how many checks are being done currently. I'd have to get back to you. I'm very interested in the probability of risk here. One of the things that we found since we became officially TB-free and required post-movement testing from high-risk areas is that farmer behaviour has changed and people are now looking to source animals. They're thinking more about it and that's been a really positive benefit because people are thinking about risk for themselves. From a personal comment here, we need to make sure that we support farmers across the United Kingdom because if a farm has a breakdown, it can be devastating not only for the family's mental health but for the financial impact as well. Farmers do not ask for bovine TB in their herd. That can happen with unintended consequences of purchasing whatever it might be or, indeed, something that hasn't been identified through testing. It's very important that, although we recognise that it's great that we've got this status in Scotland, that it's happening across our United Kingdom where the supply chain is integral to Scotland's success as well. Yeah, absolutely. For all, we don't have TB in Scotland. TB is still the biggest spend in my budget because of the testing that we do, the compensation that we pay and so it's in my interests for England and Wales to solve their problems so that there isn't a risk coming into us with animals. So as CVOs, we work very closely together. We have monthly meetings and every quarter we have TB liaison group meetings to understand what the different administrations are doing. There's the occasional person who indulges in dodgy behaviour. Most people are unfortunate victims. We're lucky we don't have a wildlife problem here. That would be so much worse and we need to keep it out of our wildlife. Thank you. I tend to agree. Last night at the BVA dinner of the British Veterinary Association, there was certainly a fantastic discussion and recognition of the issues that we have right across the UK with vets and representatives from every part of the country. That was helpful. I've got one very short technical question. We touched on cross-compliance and potential cross-compliance penalties. Will there be a need for animal health provision on the face of the agricultural bill regarding animal health and cross-compliance? We've started consideration or pre-alleg consideration in the Agri Bill but that will be before us after the summer. Yes, the intention is that there will be animal health provisions within it. Most of the legislation that we currently have for animal health is predicated on the legislation from 1981, the Animal Health Act, but that in itself needs modernising in some places. The intention is that there will be some provision within the agriculture bill but we don't know exactly what yet we're still in discussion with lawyers and others across the directorate. That's really been hugely helpful and we do appreciate you coming in at very little notice but that's certainly been hugely useful not just only for this piece of legislation but for the committee to get a better idea of what tuberculosis looks like across Scotland. Thank you very much for taking the time today. That concludes our business for today and I formally close this meeting. My apologies. The most important thing is that I asked members whether they'd have any comments on the instrument. We have no further comments. Thank you very much and that concludes the business for today.