Progress with enhancing veterinary surveillance in the United Kingdom

The uk has experienced various animal health events that have had national impact in recent years. In response, a ‘Veterinary Surveillance Strategy’ ( vss ) was published in 2003, with the objective of enhancing and coordinating national veterinary surveillance practice in a way that would enable important animal health events to be detected and assessed more rapidly and reliably. The vss adopts an integrated uk ‐wide approach, which includes widespread engagement with interested parties both within government and beyond. It proposes enhancing surveillance through improved collaboration; transparent and defensible prioritisation of government resources to surveillance; deriving better value from existing resources, and assuring quality of the surveillance reports and source data. This article describes progress with implementing the vss , in particular the methodology for developing a functional network and creating an effective, quality‐assured, information management system, radar .