Helen Buckingham, Chartered Environmental Health Practitioner and regulatory consultant, OneResolution and Lucy Manzano, Head of Port Health and Public Protection, Dover Port Health Authority, give evidence to the EFRA Committee on foot and mouth protections.
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00:00I mean, can you remind me, was it four days it took to close the borders effectively to
00:06German meat imports?
00:07I believe colleagues in the field tell me that the announcement came on the 10th, the
00:12import restrictions were changed on the 11th, the IPAFS update, IPAFS is the system on which
00:18things are notified and paperwork is moved around, IPAFS update took another seven days
00:24and in that time things got through and that was rather remarkable and I was getting calls
00:29from inland authorities saying, hang on a minute, I've just got some German whey product
00:33turning up, what do I do with it?
00:36And I think that really opened the doors to the vulnerable state we've got because we've
00:39not got enough clear communication coming down the pipe from central government about
00:44what to do.
00:45The guidance, my BCP colleagues will tell you, that the guidance about what to do and
00:50how to deal with this stuff didn't come through quick enough.
00:53So there is a 2011 handling plan online still from DEFRA about what to do in these situations
01:01and yet up-to-date guidance took a while and that's worrying for me.
01:06Lucy, you're nodding there.
01:08I'd like to just add one point on that.
01:12We're aware that for at least six days German products were able to autoclear the very systems
01:19designed to detect them and to remove them.
01:24So products within scope of the FMD controls were able to autoclear the system via TODCOV.