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2. Reason for Legislative change
2.1 Our existing legislation for the control for SVD is the Swine Vesicular Disease Order 1972. That Order applies foot and mouth disease legislation to control an outbreak of SVD. Whilst FMD controls were also appropriate for SVD at that time, the most recent (2006) controls for foot-and-mouth disease are not entirely appropriate for the control of SVD. For example: at present there are controls over milk and sheep shearing.
2.2 In addition, our legislation must also now implement the European Union legislation for the control of SVD. This is Council Directive 92/119/EEC 1 as amended by Commission Directive 2007/10/EC 2.
2.3 Therefore in light of our need to both update the existing legislation and to meet our EU obligations we have prepared a revised draft SVD Order on which we are now consulting i.e. The Swine Vesicular Disease (Scotland) Order 2009 (see Annex A). The draft Order is made under The Animal Health Act 1981. In the updated draft Order the restrictions in the control areas around infected premises are different to existing rules and the cleansing and disinfection requirements of infected premises are more stringent for SVD as the SVD virus is more resilient that the FMD virus.
2.4 Directive 92/119/EEC (as amended) maintains the fundamental principles of disease control that can be found in most other Directives and domestic legislation dealing with exotic notifiable diseases. These include:
- compulsory notification of suspect disease,
- investigation by the competent authority,
- stamping out of disease on infected premises and placing movement restrictions on that premises until the virus has been removed, and
- the imposition of wider movement controls to reduce the risk of the spread of disease.
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