Britain will next week attempt to secure a significant change in the country’s bluetongue disease status, the Press and Journal can reveal.
A bid is being made by agriculture departments to the European Commission for Scotland, England and Wales to be declared a blue zone.
That would allow tougher controls to be imposed on all livestock imports into Britain.
The declaration of a blue zone would essentially limit stock movements from the continent to animals that have been vaccinated against the deadly midge-born virus instead of the current free-for-all that allows unvaccinated stock to be moved country to country, potentially spreading the various strains of the disease.
Scottish deputy chief vet Mike Lamont said the move would mean “genuine controls” on livestock movements that should better protect Britain’s livestock sector.
He added: “Let us keep our fingers crossed that as long as the commission keeps things simple and does not ask for anything that costs a lot, then we can get this special status. Hopefully it will just be a box-ticking exercise.”
A previous attempt to apply for the blue zone on a Scotland-only basis was abandoned last May as there was a disagreement among industry groups.
While farming organisations generally backed the idea, meat wholesalers viewed it as potentially disrupting traditional trade patterns and significantly affecting the 200,000 cattle that annually moved from England into Scotland.
NFU Scotland said the latest blue zone was a “very positive development”.
Vice-president Nigel Miller, a vet, said: “Blue zone status would be good news for livestock farmers and will effectively give us the same level of protection as those countries with disease-free status.
“In Scotland we remain disease-free, courtesy of a spectacularly high level of compliance with our compulsory vaccination programme and our livestock producers sticking to the voluntary ban on the importation of livestock from bluetongue (BTV) infected areas of continental Europe.”