Risk posed by Scottish burial sites of BSE infected carcasses correspondence: EIR release

Information requested

You asked for internal and external government communication relating to the risk posed by Scottish burial sites of BSE infected carcasses.  Risk meaning information relating to potential adverse consequences;  including but not limited to the perceived likelihood that prions could have entered Scottish watercourses and the potential consequences for livestock health, human health and wildlife health.  The timeframe information requested from 1 January 2014 to the present please.

Response

As the information you have requested is ‘environmental information’ for the purposes of the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004 (EIRs), we are required to deal with your request under those Regulations.  We are applying the exemption at section 39(2) of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (FOISA), so that we do not also have to deal with your request under FOISA.

This exemption is subject to the ‘public interest test’.  Therefore, taking account of all the circumstances of this case, we have considered if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exemption.  We have found that, on balance, the public interest lies in favour of upholding the exemption, because there is no public interest in dealing with the same request under two different regimes.  This is essentially a technical point and has no material effect on the outcome of your request.

I enclose a copy of some of the information you requested.

 While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance we are unable to provide some of the information you have requested because an exception under regulation reg 11(2) (personal data of third party) of the EIRs applies to that information.  The reasons why that exception applies are explained in the Annex to this letter.

Annex - Reasons for not providing information
Regulation 11(2) – personal data of a third party

An exception under regulation 11(2) of the EIRs (personal information) applies to some of the information requested because it is personal data of a third party (e.g. names, addresses, phone numbers) and disclosing it would contravene the data protection principles in Article 5(1) of the General Data Protection Regulation and in section 34(1) of the Data Protection Act 2018. This exception is not subject to the ‘public interest test’, so we are not required to consider if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exception.

About FOI
The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at http://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.

FOI-19-02183 - Emails

File type

60 page PDF

File size

1.8 MB

FOI-19-02183 - Informaton Released

File type

2 page PDF

File size

133.9 kB