Exercise Blackthorn
The Scottish Government is working together with the Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA), Defra, Welsh Government and the Northern Ireland Government to run a UK-wide foot and mouth disease simulation exercise called Exercise Blackthorn.
The aim of Exercise Blackthorn is to exercise the government’s current contingency plans for a UK-wide outbreak of foot and mouth disease (FMD).
It will establish the current state of readiness whilst identifying issues and improvements in policies, plans, instructions, structures and recovery procedures employed in managing an outbreak.
The Exercise will simulate a medium to large scale outbreak that has spread from England to Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
A real-time exercise will be conducted on 25 and 26 April 2018, involving staff from across the Scottish Government, APHA, other UK administrations, operational partners and key industry stakeholders, before concluding on 7 June 2018 in a final table-top exercise where the simulated outbreak will be investigated to the point of disease eradication and recovery aspects considered.
Scotland’s Chief Veterinary Officer Sheila Voas said:
‘‘Regularly reviewing our plans and identifying any issues that may arise is vitally important when responding to a disease outbreak.
A UK-wide exercise of this nature provides us with the ideal opportunity to test our plans, while sharing good practices with other administrations across the UK in order to improve our effectiveness.”
An exercise evaluation report will be published in the autumn 2018.
Further Information
The EU Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD) Directive 2003/85/EC requires Member States to exercise their contingency plans twice within a five year period or during “the five years period after the outbreak of a major epizootic disease has been effectively controlled and eradicated”.
There is no ‘on the ground’ activity linked to this exercise planned on either the 25th or 26th April.
United Kingdom Contingency Plan for Exotic Notifiable Diseases of Animals
Scottish Government - Exotic Animal Disease Contingency Framework Plan
Published on: 19 April, 2018