Tuberculosis (Scotland) Amendment Order 2022: business and regulatory impact assessment

Benefits

Option 1 – Do Nothing (Status Quo)

The current system generally works well and livestock keepers are familiar with the existing requirements for TB testing and control.

Doing nothing would not however be in the best interest of the cattle industry as a whole, and there is not considered to be any real financial or disease control benefits for either Government or industry by taking no action.

The risk of not putting through this legislation is that if there are trials where TB samples are taken and tested, and these samples show to be positive, there would be no clear path on how to manage these results and control disease. Information on where disease was present or how many cattle were affected would not be provided. If many cattle are disclosed as testing positive this could put our officially TB free status at risk, which would have a negative effect on the cattle industry and could result in disruption to trade.

Option 2 - Introduce changes to TB controls - amend the Tuberculosis (Scotland) Order 2007

Under this option there will be the opportunity to strengthen our existing TB controls that will help to maintain our current low levels of TB in cattle and safeguard our valuable OTF status.

In situations where TB samples will be taken in Scotland to test with a diagnostic tool which has not been validated, the Scottish Government would not have access to any information relating to test positive cattle. In positive cases the government would have no access to any information on the number of cattle affected, the location of these cattle etc. If many cattle are disclosed as testing positive, even if this is through an unvalidated test, this could put our officially TB free status at risk, which would have a negative effect on the cattle industry and could result in disruption to trade.

These legislative changes will allow conditions to be set in cases of samples being taken for diagnostic testing, which would allow access to information such as which cattle are reactors and where these are. This would ensure that the government have full awareness of any testing carried out / the results of this testing, and can consider what implications this has for TB control in Scotland.