Chamber and committees

It is for those individual companies wishing to export fish or fish products to the US to seek their own legal advice on compliance with the relevant US regulations.

The Waste (Scotland) Regulations 2012 require separate collection of dry recyclable materials and, with the exception of specified rural areas, food waste.

Our circular economy strategy “Making Things Last” was published earlier in 2016, and sets out our ambitions and priorities to keep products and materials in high value use for as long as possible. We have set out an ambition for every household in Scotland to have access to a food waste service, and we will be discussing with local authorities how best to achieve that outcome. We will also be working closely with local authorities, including those in rural and island areas, on the implementation of the Scottish Household Recycling Charter, which will make it easier for people to recycle.

As already stated in the answer to question S5W-02631 on 15 September 2016, there is legislation in place to prevent the deliberate killing of marine mammals.

It is a matter for individual companies wishing to export fish or fish products to the US to seek their own legal advice on compliance with the US regulations.

The Waste (Scotland) Regulations 2012 provided a long lead-in time to ensure that all parties could prepare for the ban on biodegradable municipal waste going to landfill from January 2021. We will continue to work with Councils and waste management companies in preparation for the ban, including through the forthcoming Scottish Materials Brokerage Service residual waste contract which is open to all Councils.

Through its environmental permitting and regulation, SEPA requires operational landfills accepting bio-degradable waste to be engineered to capture, monitor and treat landfill gas. SEPA is also working with councils and landfill operators to minimise the risks that closed (non-operational regulated) landfills pose to the environment. The Scottish Government made £500k available to councils in 2015-16 to support the capture of methane from closed landfills, and announced a further £500k on 6 October 2016.

We are taking forward a range of actions to accelerate the widespread adoption of electric vehicles (EVs). Our strategy is set out in detail in our EV Roadmap, Switched On Scotland (www.transport.gov.scot/report/j272736-00.htm). The Roadmap is currently being reviewed, with a refreshed document scheduled for publication by Spring 2017.

With regard to support we provide towards a) the up-front cost, we fund the Energy Saving Trust’s Low Carbon Loan Scheme, which offers interest-free loans of up to £35,000 for individuals and £100,000 for businesses (£35,000 per EV).

Through our Switched On Fleets programme, we’ve also offered £3.7 million in grants across all 32 community planning partnerships over the past three years. We estimate this will result in around 350 new EVs in the Scottish public sector fleet by Spring 2017.

With regards to b) roll-out of preferential road access, we are developing a Scottish framework for local EV incentives, scheduled for publication later this year. This will include guidance for local authorities on measures such as opening up bus lanes to EVs. Furthermore, allowing EVs access to areas where more polluting vehicles are restricted or charged, will be a key consideration as we implement our commitment to putting in place a first Scottish low emission zone by 2018.

The types of HGVs being used to transport goods in Scotland are a commercial matter. Nevertheless, the Scottish Government understands the importance - and challenge - of reducing emissions from across transport, including HGVs, and look to work in partnership with industry to address this.

We do so via our well-established stakeholder group - The Scottish Freight and Logistics Advisory Group (ScotFLAG). Specifically, two ScotFLAG sub-groups have been established - one looking at urban freight deliveries, the second at last mile connections to ports and freight hubs. Both sub-groups, chaired by industry representatives, are considering how to improve the efficiency of, and in so doing reduce emissions from, the transportation of goods across Scotland.

In addition, Transport Scotland is a member of the Low Carbon Vehicle Partnership (LowCVP) – a UK-wide Government/Industry body that exists to accelerate a sustainable shift to lower carbon vehicles and fuels. The Partnership have run specific programmes for the heavy goods vehicle sector, testing a number of technologies that could help reduce future emissions from the sector. In May 2016, in conjunction with LowCVP, Transport Scotland held a workshop for stakeholders looking at the use of alternative fuels in HGVs.

Further action to reduce emissions from Heavy Goods Vehicles will be considered as part of our Climate Change Plan which will be published, in draft, in January 2017.

NHS Tayside Health Protection Team and Angus Council are currently investigating cases of E.coli O157 infection affecting a small number of children in the Angus area. The Incident Management Team for the national outbreak are in contact with those managing this investigation and initial information suggests that there may be a link to the national outbreak and investigations are ongoing. The places of residence of cases with the same strain of E. coli O157 are not being disclosed to protect patient confidentiality.

As is normal practice for the management of outbreaks such as these Health Protection Scotland (HPS) convened an Incident Management Team (IMT). The IMT is a multi-agency team comprising HPS, Food Standards Scotland, NHS Boards, Scottish E. coli O157/VTEC Reference Laboratory and Local Authority Environmental Health Teams. Membership was expanded to include Public Health England when cases were identified in England. It is the role of the IMT to consider all available evidence; epidemiological, microbiological, environmental and food chain investigations and to make recommendations based on this evidence to protect the health of the public.

On 15 September the IMT issued a statement summarising some of the investigations to date, which reported that epidemiological investigations have identified Dunsyre Blue cheese as the most likely cause of the outbreak. This was based on consideration of all available evidence including that 19 of the 22 confirmed cases had eaten blue cheese prior to becoming ill. Of these, 15 were known to have eaten Dunsyre Blue while others cannot be certain about the brand of blue cheese they have consumed. Investigations are ongoing on the other cases. Despite extensive investigation, no other common link to a majority of cases could be established.

In food related outbreaks, it is not unusual that the investigation does not directly link all of the cases to the suspected vehicle. This can be for a number of reasons including cases having an incomplete recollection of all the foods eaten prior to becoming unwell, secondary cases (person to person spread) and cross contamination.

During investigations of this nature it is not always possible to isolate the same strain of organism from the suspected food vehicle as from the human cases. There are a number of reasons for this, firstly as the time between the consumption of the food vehicle and the laboratory confirmation of the case can take up to three weeks and even longer in some cases, this means that the food consumed by cases is often no longer available for testing. In addition, not all of those who have eaten an implicated product will become ill because the organism may not be evenly distributed throughout the food.

The IMT has considered all the information available to them, and continue to be of the view that Dunsyre Blue remains the most likely cause of the outbreak.

The four Public Analyst laboratories serving all 32 Local Authorities in Scotland have the capability to identify E. coli O157 in food samples. Two of these laboratories (Edinburgh and Tayside Scientific Services) are also able to undertake the test which allows detection of the presence of stx genes. The Scottish E. coli O157/VTEC Reference Laboratory also has a role in supporting the Public Analysts by providing confirmatory analysis for the presence of pathogenic E. coli in food samples during the investigation of outbreaks of illness.

Decisions taken by Food Standards Scotland are based on consumer protection and it uses all of the evidence available during an outbreak investigation and not on the testing results alone.