New Appointments to NOAH Code Committee

The National Office of Animal Health has appointed Desmond Hutchinson as independent secretary to its committee for the Code of Practice for the Promotion of Animal Medicines.

A second independent farming member, Peter Allen, has also been appointed.

Last October NOAH voted in new rules to increase the efficiency of the workings of the Code, which exists to ensure that animal medicines promotion is not incorrect or misleading. These appointments are part of that exercise.

Mr Hutchinson is senior partner at Hutchinson, Daultry and Keen, an Enfield and Cambridge based firm of solicitors providing services primarily to the commercial sector. A former officer in the Royal Regiment of Artillery, Mr Hutchinson started training as a solicitor in 1970 and set up his own practice in 1990. Since then, he has developed a debt recovery unit and been involved in general contract disputes. He has also developed insolvency and corporate non practice, restructuring and acquisitions. He has acted as director and secretary of a number of companies.

Mr Allen is the tenant of a hill farm near Shap, Cumbria, with 1500 ewes and 60 suckler cows. He is a past Council member of the National Sheep Association and past chairman of the county hill farming committee of the National Farmers' Union. Since 1991, he has been a member of the NFU HQ Less Favoured Areas Committee and has been vice-chairman of that committee since 1993.

He joins the other independent members of the code of practice committee, farmer Bill Madders and veterinary surgeon Jim Brodie. A second independent veterinary surgeon is to be appointed.

13 June 1997