Geraint has warned that plans to cut testing facilities at veterinary labs in Wales will put the nation at risk of animal disease.

The UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) is cutting testing facilities from eight of the UK's 14 labs, including the two Welsh centres in Carmarthen and Aberystwyth, to centralise work.

 Veterinary science laboratories are responsible for carrying out testing for the government, the livestock industry and commercial customers.

Scientists also help with the early diagnosis of diseases such as foot and mouth, bovine TB and swine fever. They also provide other services including haematology, microbiology and biochemistry.

The AHVLA was created in April as a merger of Animal Health with the Veterinary Laboratories Agency.

It says testing work will be concentrated at six regional labs in England while two central labs will remain in Weybridge, Surrey, and Lasswade, near Edinburgh.

Staff from the other eight centres will have to send samples for testing to one of these regional or central AHVLA laboratories. The changes will be phased in over two years.

Geraint Davies, MP for Swansea West, told the Welsh Affairs Committee that samples from remote farms in Wales would be delayed by being transported to England leading to a risk of spreading. This would also prove costly and undermine research and development in Wales.

He  said: “If samples from remote farms in Wales are delayed by being transported to England an outbreak of foot and mouth could spread more widely and the last outbreak cost £8billion due to the speed of transmission from contaminated livestock movements.

“The current lab testing at Aberystwyth or Carmarthen is convenient for Welsh farms and laboratory tests need fresh meat to be reliable. If crucial tests become unreliable due to delays in testing then the risk of a costly outbreak increase. The Government is trying to save £8million from savings in the AHVLA across England and Wales when the last foot and mouth outbreak cost a thousand times this. It’s bonkers that the Government is taking such huge risks to make such small savings.

“This cut will also strip out vitally important research and development jobs in Wales that currently develop ground breaking international work and can potentially attract significant European research funding. This is another economic blow for Wales where we need to build the stock of high value jobs not lose them.”

 The AHVLA have said all sites would remain open and the changes would not affect the location of post-mortem facilities, the activities currently undertaken by the veterinary investigation officers, or the surveillance programme.