UK Offence Report

The Specified Risk Material Order 1997

UK Statutory Instrument 1997 No. 2964 — creates 1 criminal offence.

1offences created
0recorded in force
0revoked
Made
16 December 1997
In force from
1 January 1998
Extent
Not stated
Subject
Dogs, animals, hunting and wildlife
Made under
Schedule 2 to the Animal Health Act 1981

Explanatory note

(This note is not part of the Order) — published with the instrument by the department that made it. © Crown copyright, reused under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

This Order revokes the Specified Bovine Materials Order 1997 and the Heads of Sheep and Goats Order 1996. This Order re-makes with amendments the provisions of those Orders prohibiting the use of specified bovine material in feeding stuffs and cosmetic, pharmaceutical and medical products. The controls on the use of specified bovine material in food, and the provisions relating to the removal of specified bovine material from cattle and its destruction are now contained in the Specified Risk Material Regulations 1997. The Order imposes controls on the import of class I specified risk material (defined in article 2 by reference to the definitions of specified bovine material and specified sheep and goat material set out in articles 3 and 4), and requires imported food and feeding stuffs of the types set out in Schedule 1 to be certified by the veterinary authorities in the place from which they were despatched to the UK as not containing class I specified risk material (article 6). The Order prohibits the use of specified risk material derived from animals slaughtered in the United Kingdom in ingredients for cosmetic, pharmaceutical and medical products (article 7) and prohibits the use of all specified risk material in feeding stuffs for any creature, subject to an exemption for research purposes (article 8). Article 10 of the Order provides for the approval of premises as suitable to process specified risk material in a manufacturing process not producing any food, feeding stuff, cosmetic, pharmaceutical or medical product or any product likely to come into contact with any of them. The Order contains provisions on transport, storage and sampling (articles 11 to 13), and makes provision for the recall and disposal of specified risk material and feeding stuffs containing specified risk material imported, produced or sold in contravention of the Order (articles 14 and 15). Article 16 prohibits the export of specified risk material to other member States, except in accordance with a licence granted by the Minister. Article 17 provides that local authorities are to enforce the Order. The Order amends the Zoonoses Order 1988 (which designated bovine spongiform encephalopathy as a disease which constitutes a risk to public health) so as to apply further provisions of the Animal Health Act 1981 to it (article 18). This Order has been notified in draft to the European Commission as a technical standard, pursuant to article 8 of Council Directive 83/189/EEC (OJ L 109, 26/4/83 p. 8) laying down a procedure for the provision of information in the field of technical standards and regulations (as last amended by Directive 94/10/EC OJ L 100, 19/4/94 p. 30). A regulatory assessment for this Order has been prepared and placed in the library of each House of Parliament. Copies can be obtained from the Animal Health (BSE and International Trade) Division, Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, Government Buildings (Toby Jug), Hook Rise South, Surbiton, Surrey KT6 7NF.

Offences created by this instrument

What Parliament said about it

Hansard was searched for this instrument by name and returned nothing. That is the ordinary outcome: an instrument laid under the negative procedure is usually never debated, and becomes law without a word said about it in either House.

How Parliament handled it

Parliament's Statutory Instruments service records procedure from May 2017 onwards, and this instrument predates it. That is a limit of the source, not a statement that nothing happened.

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