Chamber and committees

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We recognise theimportant role of livestock farming in the Less Favoured Areas of the Highlands and Islands. In addition to expenditure of around£4.657 million, in these areas, on the Scottish Beef Calf Scheme (which aims tosustain quality beef production, particularly in remote and fragile areas, andprotect the environment), LessFavoured Area Support Scheme payments(worth around £24.225 million in the Highlands and Islands) are conditional onactive livestock farming.

This information ispublicly available in the form of the Scottish Statutory Instruments Statisticsand is available from the Office of the Queen’s Printer for Scotland (OQPS). Thestatistics show the total number of Scottish Statutory Instruments broken down byyear since Devolution in 1999 and by subject area since 2001. The information canbe accessed on the OQPS website at the following address http://www.oqps.gov.uk/legislation/ssi/statistics.

The Scottish Government’spolicy is that the procurement of goods and services should be based on value formoney having due regard to propriety and regularity, including compliance with legalobligations. This allows procurement decisions to take account of specific requirementsincluding quality assurance standards, required delivery frequency, seasonal availabilityand freshness, provided that these criteria are not designed to discriminate againstnon local suppliers. These legal obligations cover the whole EU and are not specificto Scottish buyers.

Livestock identificationrequirements in Scotland are set at EU level and are applicable toall live animals (only applies to cattle, sheep, goats and pigs) irrespective oftheir final destination in the food chain. Animals from EU member states will beidentified to similar standards as on Scottish farms and any animal arriving fromthird countries require to be identified on arrival to the same level as domesticanimals.

Perth Bull Sales are important sales attractingbuyers and sellers from a wide area of the UK,and the organisers have been in discussion with the Scottish Government, includingveterinary advisors, about what measures are required to best mitigate any risk.

Any animals comingto the sales from the bluetongue restricted zone will be subject to EU regulations,including the requirement for negative results from pre-movement testing for bluetonguebefore they can exit the restricted zone.

In addition, animalsarriving in Scotland will be subjected to further checks through the post-movementnotification and checking regime recently put in place in Scotland for animals arrivingfrom a bluetongue Restricted Zone.

In response to thefoot-and-mouth disease outbreak in Surrey the Scottish Governmentcommitted a £25 million support package to provide relief and recovery to thosemost affected.

Costs to the industryfrom the impact of the necessary movement restrictions are currently being assessedas part of Professor Scudamore’s review into the Scottish response. The resultsof this research will be published in due course.

The Scottish Governmenthas ensured that strong representations have been made to the European Commissionto ensure that robust rules are in place to regulate the movement of susceptibleanimals out of bluetongue restricted zones. At the 10 January meeting of the StandingCommittee on the Food Chain and Animal Health the European Commission challengedall member states to ensure that the regulations are observed.

As a further protectionpost-import testing of susceptible animals continues to be undertaken. Industrycan help to reduce the risk of disease incursions by not sourcing stock from areasof high-risk.

The Scottish Government is notin a position to quantify with any certainty the overall amount of fish discardedannually in the Clyde by the small mesh Nephrops fishery. Discarded fish includesmall and unwanted commercial species, but also species which have no commercialvalue which are also taken by fishing gears.

Fisheries Research Services (FRS)runs an observer programme which is directed at estimating the discarded componentof the main commercial species. That observer programme suggests that quantitiesof landings and discards of cod made by smaller meshed vessels are small in AreaVIa particularly in the Clyde. The Clyde Cod closure which has run from 14 Januaryto 30 April in the first quarter of the year is considered to be effective in protectingcod at a time when they are aggregating to spawn. The observer programme also suggeststhat landings of haddock and whiting in the Clyde are also small, but discards ofhaddock and whiting are markedly higher than discards of cod and may be of the orderof several hundred tonnes per year. The Scottish Government intends to work withthe fishing industry and others to implement measures, in particular under the ConservationCredits scheme, to reduce such discards.

The Scottish Government issueda contract to Glasgow Caledonian University on 16 November 2007 to undertake a study into the EconomicImpact of Recreational Sea Angling in Scotland. We expect the study to report later this year.

The Scottish Government believesthat there is a need to reduce the complexity of fisheries management and that thereis little merit in introducing additional management categories at this stage.