Gardening

And so we wave farewell to Dr Debby Reynolds. We wish her well. We wish her a better future. We wish ourselves a better future. But those choosing Chief Veterinary Officers seem to be searching for special skills. The last thing wanted in a CVO, it seems, is the dangerous ability to empathise with animals and people. Such a weakness could jeopardise the "disease control strategy" which, according to the departing Debby, "is the best in the world".
(These really were the valedictory words of the CVO. An inability to engage with reality would appear to be another characteristic much prized.)

In 2001, the late, great Professor Fred Brown O.B.E was scathing of another CVO, Jim Scudamore. He said of the poor man that he would be better off doing a different job; "gardening, for example". Fred was one of the best British scientists ever - a brilliant and kindly searcher and researcher of the old school where what mattered was the truth. One of my best memories of him was while we were going through the obstacle course of security at (the so well named) Portcullis House. We were on our way to talk to David Curry, the Chair of the EFRA committee. While we waited, Professor Brown was telling me how Pirbright had been 'world class' precisely because it had been, in its heyday, a public service laboratory. It existed in order to serve the public through science.
And that pretty well summed up Fred Brown too.

There wasn't much he didn't know about Foot and Mouth, but as he wryly remarked,

"scientists know more and more about less and less while politicians know less and less about bugger all."

The EFRA Committee is that All-Party Select Committee whose job includes overseeing DEFRA. Our hopeful little band thought that if the Chairman heard Fred talking with such competent enthusiasm about the elegant new ARS Tetracore FMD PCR device he could hardly fail to use his influence to get the tests trialled and then adopted for use in the UK. Unfortunately, this did not happen.

That 2001 test could, (as the 2007 machines can do even better and more cheaply,) check whether animals were infected with foot and mouth before clinical signs were apparent. There was no fear of cross contamination because of the self sealing cartridge. Proper RT-PCR testing could be done on the farms themselves and give reliable results within the hour.

Had the EFRA Committee put all its clout behind on-site PCR, virtually none of the bloody and senseless killing that was going on then and has been going on since need have taken place.

Early in the 2001 crisis a question had been put to Sir David King, one of the chief architects of the UK's kill them first, ask afterwards policy:

If this machine is as accurate as Professor Brown told me, he said it is 99 per cent accurate, could it not have saved this huge, vast, expensive cull of mainly healthy animals?

It was the best question of 2001 - but it got the wrong answer.

King's waffling reply can be read here. He failed to understand the complexities of what the US were offering for trial but implied that he, David King, naturally, knew all about these machines. He defined the term "PCR" for the benefit of the assembled company. He implied that Pirbright (and himself) knew best. The suggestion that the ARS Tetracore kit worked better than anything the UK could produce for itself was, he implied, nonsense. And cross contamination most certainly would be a problem.

And after the carnage, Sir David King's contempt continued unabated. The following December, after literally millions of healthy animals had been slaughtered in very nasty circumstances indeed, Britain's Chief Scientific Advisor congratulated himself on a job well done and told the Today Programme "we did attempt to validate Fred Brown's test"

No. Professor King is mistaken. What appeared in the Veterinary Record on 6 October 2001 (and it is interesting that it no longer seems to appear in the Vet Rec archive): as "Evaluation of a portable, 'real-time' PCR machine for FMD diagnosis", by Alex Donaldson and his team, was a fiasco because it tested the body of the machine but with the wrong reagents. Which is rather like testing a motor bike after filling its tank with lemonade. "The reagents used in the assay were recommended by the manufacturer of the instrument" claimed the authors - but they were not recommended by the manufacturer, only by a rival company who didn't know what reagents were needed any more than Pirbright did and were only guessing. The paper said that the machine gave "poor results" and that, as far as David King was concerned, was that.

Had it been properly trialled with the correct reagents - in other words, had the US offer been courteously accepted - the story of FMD in 2001 would be very different.

And in 2007, had such machines been used, with or without vaccination, the grief of these past endless weeks could have been spared too. But, because of the intransigence of David King, Debby Reynolds and the yes men of DEFRA and elsewhere, we had neither.

In anywhere other than DEFRAworld, that virus escape from Pirbright would have heralded a real time exercise in vaccination of such importance that farmers and countrymen would have been united in their gratitude. The wretched virus would have been stopped efficiently in its tracks and, to make assurance doubly sure, portable RT-PCR diagnostic machines, operated by anyone after the most cursory training, would have been able to check the oral and nasal swabs of any nearby herds with very little need for blood to be taken. The whole thing would have been over within days.

Why do we go on banging on about all this? Why can we not just let it go?
There are two reasons. The first is that DEFRA still seems unaware of the importance of this technology - in spite of the UK's contribution to the development of new versions such as the Enigma machine at Porton and the Smiths Detection machine These machine must by now be nearly ready for commercial buyers. Some would say it is precisely for this reason that DEFRA has been waiting; so that the profits will come to the UK. Little hope. Small, efficient, cheap machines from elsewhere are on the way and they will be unstoppable. But it is heartbreaking to know that in the former Soviet Bloc countries, machines as small as toasters are already being used routinely on farms to detect and track pathogens with RT-PCR. In those countries viruses such as FMD and Bluetongue can be detected and stopped before they spread and cause the sort of damage that they wreak in Europe.

The second reason is that in a decent society we should expect accountability in our leaders. Animal Health policy in the UK has very little to do with health and even less to do with concern for animals. It is all about maintaining control. Those who have dragged farmers and animals into an unnecessary nightmare have never been accountable, they have never been sacked, they have never even apologised. On the contrary, most of them have been promoted and covered in honours or at least, as DEFRA might put it, " with plaudits".


It is time they were shown the door, leaving animal health to those who would care about animals and about their health. The blessings of modern veterinary science, the boon of technology and vets worth the name should be in charge.

And all the rest should go on gardening leave.

No one will enter my farm to kill my animals...

Brave, admirable, doomed words.

"If the veterinary service does not show me in writing whose animals actually have this disease, no one will enter my farm to kill my animals,”

Farmers in Cyprus are tearful, angry and disbelieving of the nightmare into which they have been plunged. Brussels is telling them to kill their animals - they want to know which ones for why should they kill healthy animals? Brussels is telling them to comply with the rules - they want to know why they should. Brussels thinks that compensation will silence the outrage - but one farmer,fighting back tears during the House Agriculture Committee hearing on Monday, said his livestock were like his children:

"They offered me £150 for every adult sheep… and £20 for every lamb [to be culled]. I said to them, ‘I wouldn’t even accept £1,150.
Then we sat down and looked at another price estimate. I told them to get up and leave and not to come back. The next day they returned, and this time they didn’t even bother to talk to me or ask me to sign anything. They just went ahead and executed the animals.."

The Cyprus Mail reports that the head of the Veterinary Services, Charalambos Kakoyiannis, appears to be as appalled as the farmers.

"For better or worse, we are in the EU now. I sympathise with your cries of distress and I know you feel as if their animals are like members of your families".

"For better - for worse"? Trusting Cyprus entered willingly into that marriage of 2004. But after all the optimism of the wedding the EU mask drops to reveal something rather worse than a skull. The farmers have no power to resist. Blood-letting and grief has been forced upon them this week by political expediency, not by foot and mouth disease. Now that modern science has provided us with potent inactivated vaccines; now that technical ingenuity has given us the ability - on-site -to diagnose active virus within minutes rather than hours, there is no excuse for the kill first, ask afterwards policy. For what happened in the killing fields of Surrey there was no veterinary or scientific basis; there is none for what is happening under the autumn sun of Cyprus. Anyone who pretends otherwise is a charlatan. All that is lacking is political will.

Emergency vaccination has been used successfully right across the globe in recent years. It works. There has never been a single reported case in the field of an FMD vaccinated animal spreading disease. And the irony is that emergency vaccination is actually permitted by Brussels. But Brussels rules are in place to protect that talisman of protectionism, the status of being "FMD free without vaccination" - so governments will "consider" it and do nothing.

Fotis Fotiou, the Cypriot Agriculture Minister told the farmers that

"any notion that Brussels deliberately wanted to destroy the Cypriot livestock industry was fantastical."

Difficult to think of a more effective way had it been so.
Farmers in the UK are now looking at the destruction of their industry - not because of animal disease but because of the supposed cure for it:Zones and restrictions imposed on us by the EU and by a Ministry that will go to all lengths to enforce rules that are mad, bad, cruel, ignorant and senseless.

The battle for a humane animal health policy goes way beyond a fuzzy concern for animal welfare. It is a battle about personal control and responsibility being wrested away from us. The justification for the removal of our freedoms is - as always - that it is for our ultimate good. It is the ultimate cynicism of those high on the drug of power. This is a battle worth fighting.

Yet it is almost too painful. To report on the calamity unfolding in Cyprus and reading the words of the farmers bring back with such grim clarity the sense of desperation and trauma that the killing policy has brought to us in the past decade. It is a recurring nightmare. We feel physically sick. We want to turn away. We want to drown it out, forget it and stop all this. And that is precisely why we must go on.

(Painting by FMD Vaccination campaigner, John English - now sadly no longer with us. He was always much admired in the Forest of Dean for his love of pigs and cattle and his ability to catch a moment. The painting is a legend. It was with great sadness we heard of his recent and sudden death.)

"It seems that we are obliged to kill ..."

Poor Cyprus. It has only been a member of the EU since 2004. They are now suffering their first foot and mouth outbreak since 1964 and many there must be aghast to see how membership of the EU brings with it all the miseries that farmers in the UK have suffered - stringent movement restrictions , surveillance, "biosecurity measures" and, worst of all, the forced killing of their farm animals. Hardly surprising that a crowd of angry farmers on Sunday blocked entry to the two farms where officials wanted to kill the animals. It was useless. The cull went ahead yesterday.

The Cypriot Agriculture Minister, Fotis Fotiou, showed in a radio statement his shock at the measures insisted upon by the EU:

"It seems that we are obliged to kill livestock from the three remaining farms as well, which represents around 1,500 animals. Nobody can rule out the culling of many more animals if other test results come back from London indicating the disease has spread."

After the false reassurances of an earlier all-clear at the end of October, the UK has now declared that the latest samples are positive for serotype O of the virus - and all the miserable clanking machinery of the EU has moved into place; the Union has banned all exports of fresh meat, live animals and milk products from the country; the Cypriot authorities have already killed all the sheep in the affected flocks; a 3km protection zone and 10km surveillance zone have been set up around the holding - and thousands more animals are in the firing line, just as in the UK in 2001 and in this miserable year.

The President of Cyprus, Tassos Papadopoulos, has told islanders (see report) that

"this is a sacrifice that must be made if the broader dangers for the stockbreeding industry of the island are to be tackled."

A sacrifice? But this too was the hollow consolation felt by the farmers in Surrey,who thought that their reluctant countenancing of the killing of their own animals would save other farmers from the same misery. The Emersons, when their animals - pigs, sheep and, worst of all, the breeding cows, all named, that they cared for so much - were all killed "on suspicion", consoled themselves that theirs would be the last farm. But at least 33 holdings in Surrey (not merely the 8 "infected premises" as officialdom would have people believe) suffered the same fate. Without even having on-farm tests to prove the presence of disease, all the Emerson's free range animals - even the two pet goats - were killed. It took hours to kill the pigs and the cows. It continued well into the night under arc lamps. Not one of the animals was subsequently found to have been infected with Foot and Mouth.
I challenge anyone to listen to the BBC's On Your Farm and fail to be moved by the courage, dignity and unsentimental sadness of this couple.

The right and honourable method of dealing with this disease is to use the blessing of modern virology: vaccination. But, for reasons one can only guess at, the UK would not use the on-site tests that could have saved the animals on all those premises that were summarily condemned by being designated "dangerous contacts" and "slaughtered on suspicion". It is despicable. The Emersons are too much affected by the death of the animals they had cared for to continue to keep breeding cows. And in spite of her stoicism, going into their eerily deserted pig barn with the interviewer proved too much for Mrs Emerson. The UK policy depends on the kindly decency of such farmers - and it lets them down.

And now we see the same misery descending on Cyprus.

What heartbreaking nonsense this all is. Foot and Mouth is not a terrifying killer. It is a disease where symptoms can be of varying degrees of severity. In Surrey they were so mild that many animals had recovered before being detected as having had the disease - but that recovery did not prevent the authorities from killing not only those animals but literally hundreds of others nearby. Yet in the EU and also in the US the downright lie persists that there are no vaccines that can provide an alternative to such indiscriminate killing.

Modern potent vaccines can be used to protect a nation's livestock. Instead, by making vaccination the poor relation in disease control, the EU continues to treat FMD as if it were an invincible terror necessitating the most draconian measures. While officials "stamp out" the disease they also stamp on the feelings and rights of the farmers and kick asunder all the ethics of humane, science- based veterinary care.

When the desperate idiocy of all this is finally put right and people look back on it all they will hardly be able to believe that we were capable of such callousness. As Alan Bennett says of the 2001 mass culling (Untold Stories p293):

"In fifty years' time I am sure that we will not handle animals the way we do now and to succeeding generations our behaviour will seem as barbarous as bear baiting...."

Scotland the brave

The virus-carrying midges of Northern Europe, deterred and terrified by brave words from the Scots farming union bosses, are going to make a U turn at Hadrian's Wall.
Scotland is a country where midges are virtually unknown.

None of this is true, alas, but to hear a spokesman for the Scottish Beef Cattle Association, evidently appalled that his English counterpart advocates a survival package that would bring Scotland into the Surveillance zone, you would think that it was. He says,

"The SBCA could not be party to a policy which could expose the Scottish livestock industry to this most dreadful disease."

The National Beef Association, the British Pedigree Beef Society's Group, the Livestock Auctioneers Association, and British Camelids are trying to do something to defend their members and protect the animals. They have all asked the Chief Vets of England, Scotland and Wales - in a bid to rescue their members from the consequences of the DEFRA restrictions -

• to extend the protection zone to cover the whole of Great Britain - or at least
• to allow the movement of pre-tested pedigree stock from a protection zone to a free zone,
• and to make sure that the use of an inactivated BTV vaccine does not result in trade barriers being erected against vaccinated stock.
  

(Actually this is likely to happen the other way round, Vaccinated stock will be at a premium. In Spain a vaccinated calf makes on average 100 EUROS more on the market than an unvaccinated calf.)

NBA director, Kim Haywood says of the four organisations:

"They want to see a compulsory vaccination programme for GB and full government backing for a European Community vaccination policy that covers all Member States."

A compulsory scheme would, of course, be ideal. All the same, even - best case scenario - with Intervet and Merial pulling out all the stops following firm committed orders, no one knows how far vaccine supplies are going to be able to stretch and it is still of vital importance that all the affected governments work together to ensure that vaccine policies are in line with EU requirements. We want to make sure that the pot of funding available from EU taxpayers can be shared by all who need it. Scotland is not included in DEFRA's tendering for vaccine supplies (nor is Wales) and one hopes that they will not assume invulnerability to the point that they fail to make quick and urgent orders for vaccine.

Dan Buglass in today's Scotsman writes,

"Scotland is perceived to be less at risk because of its cooler climate and more northerly latitude..."

"Perceived to be at less risk by whom?" one wonders wearily. Do they really not remember that the rest of the UK was saying that a little while ago too. Indeed, Debby Reynolds said much the same thing on the Today Programme on the 19 Aug 2006. When the Dutch authorities had identified the presence of the blue tongue virus in the Netherlands, our CVO said that although it was "a significant development" the risk to British sheep was "low overall".

For Scotland to stand similarly aloof, assuming that this is a disease that can only affect them if infected animals come into Scotland from elsewhere, is bravado on a par with that of King Canute.

Their brains are in their pockets

With the news that England (alone) is at least "tendering" for Bluetongue vaccine, we can see that the stable door is at least being approached. But those who would lock it are doing so in blindfolds and the horse is a speck on the horizon.

As always, the notion of actually using vaccination - the one method that works - seems to be simply too much for DEFRA to cope with. It has not ordered any vaccine. It has put out tentative feelers to both Merial and Intervet to ask how much money they want for their vaccines. How can the vaccine companies possibly give an answer if they don't know how much is going to be ordered across the EU? And how - we ask it through a megaphone - can DEFRA continue to keep Merial from its vital work at Pirbright when DEFRA's own appointed expert,Professor Spratt, says it has always been perfectly safe to work with Bluetongue virus there? Is Merial having to send its vital supplies away to France? This seems utterly absurd when every minute counts.

Inter-governmental sharing of information is not happening. DEFRA clearly does not know what other governments are doing in the matter of vaccine. Not surprising then that the Opposition is talking about Britain being "at the end of the queue"

But what queue? Why a queue? There is a lot of money available from the EU to cover costs. It is there to be applied for. Why all this talk of farmers paying? All governments affected by Bluetongue ought to be conferring and acting together - they ought to have done it months and months ago - to ensure that the vaccine companies were primed and ready to supply as much vaccine as needed for all. Without vaccine - for once all agree with this - there really is no hope of getting rid of the BTv-8 strain of virus.

"With every passing day, this map looks more like the opening credits of Dad’s Army..." said the NFUS. Even now, as the midges become more and more infected, European cooperation would help, would it not? Are governments talking to each other or not? It would seem not - since they are not acting in unison.


www.land-care.org.uk comments today:

"It would appear that the EC, who controls the use of vaccines throughout the EU, has been wasting endless time arguing about trade matters, rather than trying to get to grips with the disease itself. Why were our UK representatives at Brussels not insisting on a logical vaccination programme that could be delivered at a time when it would be most effective?"

It will have occurred to many others apart from ourselves and Land Care to wonder what the European Union is for if not to help Member States act in unison at such a time of crisis. The EU Commission had promised to pay 100% costs of vaccine and half the administration costs if a proper and coherent plan could be demonstrated. But practical help and expert advice cannot be expected from them. Member States are on their own. The onus therefore is on Member States to apply for this compensation and to comply with all that the EU demands.

Supporters of the EU claim that all this centralisation exists to facilitate issues of common advantage. The EU involves itself in everything from foreign policy to immigration. It has created a mountain of laws and a monstrosity of regulation. Why - with its huge budgets and expertise - can't it help its apparently hapless member states to formulate a policy - to get them talking and sharing information? What on earth is it really for?

Government spokesmen will sniffily assert that they are always acting in partnership "with industry". The truth is though that DEFRA tends to keep all its little consultation groups separate. Neither effective communication nor true consultation can really be said to be happening. DEFRA, like the EU itself, is now asking its "core stakeholders" to sort out its own response to Bluetongue.
It was Ruth Watkins who, as a working farmer herself but also a virologist, concerned at the piecemeal nature of the vaccination policy that seems to be envisaged, said this morning:

"...People will move unvaccinated (and possibly unknown to them infectious) animals out of the zone if they possibly can, illegally or legal movements or bust.. I shall be sorry if the unions let this happen. They are not guardians of the livestock industry but defenders of the interests of a few rich farmers.
Their brains are in their pockets..."

The vast majority of farmers are given no say at all over their own livelihoods. Real understanding of the disease and what should be being done seems as elusive as ever. Responsibility has been dumped onto farmers who are as in the dark as anyone else and now depending on the "core stakeholders" to know best. And it is the farmers, it seems, who must - in all senses of the word - pay the price.

"Culling" is far too cosy a word to describe what goes on.

It is a measure of how docile the public will be if glaring facts are kept quietly away from them with the collusion of the media. The whole country should be up in arms at the utter idiocy of the situation. But DEFRA continues to pursue its crazy path and its edicts are obeyed as if it were acting in the public interest.

It is Orwellian.

"Do not imagine, comrades, that leadership is a pleasure. On the contrary, it is a deep and heavy responsibility. No one believes more firmly than Comrade Napoleon that all animals are equal. He would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves. But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be?"

Well, if the decisions were made by the virologists, by the vets, by the farmers and by the decent people all over the country we would have a policy that protects instead of one that kills.
Animal Farm's Squealer can turn black into white, day into night, suffering farmers can be turned into hypocritical whingers, and a Department incompetent to the point of gibbering lunacy can somehow still be taken seriously. And now farmers are to help pay for the policies that are forcing them out of business and causing them such grief. But they will be as helpless as ever. They will not share in the decision-making. That is for the "core stakeholders", some of whose trotters, one suspects, are cosy warm.

"We should use the word killing not the euphemism..." The farmer and vet Carl Boyde, in yesterday's BBC report from the killing fields of Surrey, said that "culling" is far too soft a word to describe what goes on.
It was one small step towards giving the public a glimpse of the the sheer misery of the situation in Surrey when DEFRA's FMD policy wrought its havoc.


Carl Boyde:

"We should be looking at the whole situation - vaccination - is that not a better way?"

As that kindly farmer/vet reminded us, in 1923, the 2nd Duke of Westminster had a herd of Dairy Shorthorns at his Eaton Hall estate in Cheshire. He sidestepped the draconian killing regulations, successfully nursed the herd back to health and several of the cured animals went on to win prizes at The Royal Show the following summer. But in the 1967 outbreak no such permission was received and the 300-strong Eaton herd of pedigree Dairy Shorthorns dating back to 1880 and containing champions, all were slaughtered.

This is the policy that against all scientific and ethical considerations persists to this day. Foot and Mouth is indeed a Manufactured Plague - as Abigail Woods so cogently explains in her book.

Arguments backed by knowledge of disease, understanding of modern vaccines, availability of state of the art on-farm diagnosis - in short, all pleas for sanity - fall on the defra ears and closed mind of the authorities.

The EU regulations are mad and bad. They are not founded on scientific knowledge. Their proclaimed precautionary principles are nonsense. Far from existing to protect the health and safety of animals and people, they protect the trading profits of the few. The victims are the rest of us - and the many decent farmers who care about their animals.

This BBC clip shows the continuing distress in Egham of the couple whose misery was recorded on warmwell.com on September 21st.
Carl Boyde is their local vet and what he says rings with the authentic tones of one who sees that the Emperor has no clothes:

" If we can buy and eat meat from countries which practise vaccination why on earth shouldn't we do it here with our own animals? It seems to me a great anomoly that even now in 2007 we still have the same mid-Victorian killing policy which has persisted in successive Ministries of Agriculture and persists in DEFRA to this day."

The BBC interviewer obediently trots out the mantra that Defra "have to abide by European law which states that to keep the highest level of international trading status we cannot routinely vaccinate" and the non-sequitor that vaccination "wouldn't protect against all the different strains of foot and mouth."

Give us strength, oh Lord. No one is arguing that it would. Vaccine protects against the strain for which it is designed - and in Surrey that strain was known (hardly surprising but accidents happen especially when government funding and regulatory care is so abysmal) There were, of course, supplies of the exact match vaccine to hand. Nor is anyone arguing at this stage for routine vaccination - although it will undoubtedly come one day.
The escape of virus is one thing. Turning that accident into a national disaster when the application of vaccination could have contained and eradicated the problem within days is utter, staggering insanity.
Until the public at large realise the miserable absurdity of our current policy and raise their voices against it, the big players of the meat industry, with the dead-eyed collusion of DEFRA and the EU protectionism, will continue to stamp out and stamp on people like the Hepplethwaites.

The horrors and terror and waste of 2001 cost the country £8 billion. The costs this time are still being calculated. Meanwhile, Rob Lawrence, the Hepplethwaites and all those others like them in Surrey, mourn the untimely deaths of their animals, the lonely fields, the changed landscape. They contemplate the future with bewilderment and grief. We contemplate it with anger and a determination that things can will and must change.

We have to write

Dr Iain Anderson is once again going to chair a review of the Government's reaction to the 2007 Foot and Mouth Disease Outbreak. He has been asked to review lessons drawn from the 2001 outbreak and identify any others arising from the current outbreak. Comments have to be received by 16th November. See also www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk

The decision not to use emergency vaccination was astonishing. The handling by DEFRA illustrates the woeful lack of understanding within the Department of viral disease. All the conditions for immediate success had been met.
We knew the source.
We knew the strain.
We had the laboratory within arms length
and we knew the timescale.
The virus could have been stopped in its tracks within days by ring vaccination from the outside in.

2000 animals in Surrey would not have had to be slaughtered and nor would the obscenely termed "welfare culls" of half a million healthy hill lambs have been needed.

It seems highly likely that the EU would have been sympathetic to such emergency action and would have looked with favour on regionalisation of the immediate area so that the absurd situation of a general country-wide shut down need never have arisen. It could well have led to the outdated regulations receiving critical re-evaluation.

Because rapid on-site testing was not done except for antibodies, only a handful of the 2000 animals killed turned out to have been infected.


If people do not make these points there will be no barriers at all against yet another anodyne report being written and self-congratulation all round.
More at warmwell.com,

Lies, Science and the death of Bees

When he was at its helm, that eminent expert in bird behaviour, Sir John Krebs, and the FSA itself, were selected winners of the prestigious "Pants on Fire" award by the Norfolk Genetic Information network - for

'their complete failure to live up to their billing as a "force for change" in consumer protection'

The Food Standards Agency has now ordered a review into its advice that

"the current scientific evidence does not show that organic food is any safer or more nutritious than conventionally produced food."

Sir John was well known to be an advocate of GM foods before his surprise appointment to the FSA, dismissing anyone who disagreed as "shrill, often ill-informed and dogma-driven". He was also a member of that inner circle of scientists from the Dark Side, King, Anderson, May, Woolhouse, Ferguson and co. who between them perpetrated and then defended the horrors of the 2001 contiguous cull. Sir David King has recently expressed concern that the public is not always on board with the best scientific advice:

"If we have a breakthrough, and society is not accepting of that, then we have a problem..."

How cynical some of us have become to be less than impressed with his new code of "seven principles aimed at building trust between scientists and society." But it is not words that build trust. And how devalued has that phrase "best scientific advice" become too. It has been wielded in order to bludgeon into silence the perhaps "unscientific" but nevertheless gut level wisdom of the grass roots.

So the FSA is going to look again at last at the best scientific advice that has kept them contemptuous of organic farming for nearly a decade. As if to support such a move, we read today that an ongoing four year Newcastle University study has found that

"Fruit and vegetables contain up to 40 per cent more nutrients if they are grown without chemical fertilisers and pesticides, organic milk contains 80 per cent more antioxidants and organic produce also had higher levels of iron and zinc, vital nutrients lacking in many people's diets."

Did we really need a £12 million project to tell us that? People do not need to be scientists to have an instinctive grasp of what is good.

So Geoffrey Lean's article in the Independent today came as a nasty shock. It revealed that the government has been using taxpayers' "tens of millions of pounds a year to boost research into modified crops and foods" Constant claims of impartiality on GM technology and repeated promises to promote environmentally friendly, "sustainable" farming are, quite simply, lies. Internal documents obtained by the Independent under the Freedom of Information Act reveal that DEFRA (which will not allow farmers to vaccinate their animals against foot and mouth even though the vaccines are safe and effective) have allowed the biotech giant BASF to plant 450,000 modified potatoes in British fields. DEFRA officials ..

"..repeatedly went to remarkable lengths to make sure the trial conditions, supposed to protect the environment and farmers, were "agreeable" to BASF"

How ironic that the Times today asks who will regulate the regulators.

".. “Health and Safety” seems now to be the universal excuse to ban anything that was once enjoyable: bonfires on Guy Fawkes night, conkers contests, diving boards in public swimming baths, festive lights, amateur dramatics – and scores of other traditions embedded in the fabric of life..."

But the nanny state does not stretch its neck into the dark alleys of the biotech industry. The Health and Safety police are not shining their flashlights onto the fact that stringent tests are not required for 'biopesticides' produced continuously in open fields; nor for the herbicides and herbicide residues accumulated by herbicide-tolerant GM crops. "The two traits, biopesticides and herbicide tolerance now account for practically all GM crops grown in the world today,"says www.i-sis.org.uk

Those who have a deep seated worry about the way genes are manipulated by the biotech companies are often derided. And indeed as an advocate of vaccine production involving some degree of genetic engineering I can hardly want to throw the baby out with the bath water. But this is not an all or nothing issue. Nothing need stop me from being glad that human insulin can be grown in GM yeast. The baby can be kept happily in the tub and still the question of the possible biotech monopoly of the food chain be raised with deep misgivings.

A fierce GM debate is raging in Europe. In France, where 80 percent of the public are against GMO foods, President Sarkozy has said no more will be grown until an evaluation has been considered. When one type of GM maize was fed to rats in a laboratory study at the University of Caen, their immune system was weakened, a finding that echoes the study done 10 years ago by Dr Arpad Putzai whose research at the Rowett Institute in Aberdeen found that rats developed stomach lesions after eating GM potatoes.

He was vilified. Being a heretic of today's scientific authodoxy is not much healthier than it was in the days of Galileo.

Hungary banned the planting of Monsanto's MON 810 seed in January 2005. Germany says maize grown from MON 810 seeds can only be sold if there is an accompanying monitoring plan to research its effects on the environment. Austria could soon be facing an attempt by EU regulators to force it to lift bans on two GMO maize types. See www.dw-world.de

Plans for full commercial go ahead in the UK are not far away. Farmers will be allowed to plant GM oilseed rape just 35 metres from non-GM crops, forage maize will be able to be planted 80 metres away and grain maize will be allowed within 110 metres of conventional crops. Pollen can be carried by insects or wind for miles (a pine tree's pollen has been shown to spread 400 miles away.)
In Canada, the introduction of GM oilseed rape has all but wiped out the organic oilseed rape industry by cross contamination.

And what of the bees? The so called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD)could well be laid at the door of the biotechnicians. It has been seriously suggested that bees are disappearing because of exposure to the unnaturally large quantities of the naturally occurring pesticide Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis) which is produced in GM crops. In the GM plant Bt is produced by every cell including roots, stems, leaves and flowers - and the pollen.
It is not clear if the quantities of Bt produced by GM crops are themselves to blame for bee deaths. We know that the parasitic varroa mite that carries the Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus, has put paid to many millions of bees. However, what is clear is that organic farmers such as those at Sheepdrove go out of their way to nurture plants that redress the balance and help the bees.

Albert Einstein said,

"If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe then man would only have four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man."

On the issue of GMOs the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) is defiant. It says its funding for the research on GM crops would continue even if there was "a Europe-wide ban" on growing them commercially. (It may be remembered that the BBSRC, which also owns the land and buildings on the Pirbright site, was not so keen to shell out for some drain repairs. As Jonathan Shaw told the House of Commons this month, funding of the effluent drainage system, "whether remedial or replacement" was their business as much as IAH's or Merial's.)

Tony Blair put Labour Party donor, Lord Sainsbury, on the government's GMO regulatory committee - a clear case of clash of interests. Labour's legislation covering GMO trials has been risible and no one bothers to deny any more that Governments and big business work hand in hand. And where does that leave small business? The UK government seems to be facing up to the end of traditional farming with an extraordinary stoicism. It is hard not to speculate on the reasons why.
Monsanto and its rival giants maintain that biotech foods are the only solution to global hunger. And acting on the best scientific advice no doubt, our government wants a cut of the huge profits to be made in the course of carrying out this altruistic aim.

There is a truth here that is so obvious it somehow never gets mentioned

He who controls the food has control of the people

What a heady thought to those high on power already.

urgency

Time is ticking away. And we feel like passengers on a rapidly sinking ship who are not being given access to the lifeboats we can see lined up on the davits because there has not yet been an official drill.
The UK has NOT put in any order for Bluetongue BTv-8 vaccine because, say DEFRA, it isn't yet available.

Well it won't be if they don't order it.

Is somebody with a bit of clout yet understanding all this and realising the lunacy of inaction and demanding that urgent decisions be made? Well, it is just possible that there are some within the Opposition parties who are on the case at last. We watch and hope.

We can only hope too that someone at Page Street was listening to Intervet's Paul van Aarle on Farming Today this morning.

"It's not a matter of difficulty. We have good production capacity and can handle quantities (if they are certain). The main issue there is when we get the commitment from the government..."

Merial, of course, were further on in production even than Intervet - but when DEFRA banned further work on the vaccine in Surrey everything ground to a halt. Merial's vaccine now has to be produced in France.


We hear from an organic sheep farmer in Germany that the third company, Fort Dodge, is also developing an inactivated BTv-8 vaccine in Spain. He was told:

"We are aware, that there is an urgent need for vaccine and we would be happy for you if we already had one. We can only succeed in producing the necessary amount of doses by working together,"

Working together does seem the only possible way for Europe to emerge from this and it looks as though the vaccine companies are prepared to work in collaboration to prepare adequate doses of vaccine in the face of a threat that involves us all.

Are the European countries able to get together too? It is vital to ensure that a coherent plan is drawn up Europe wide. The affected organisations in the UK are now strongly urging the UK government to take the necessary steps - and how bizarre that things are moving so desperately slowly. But Kim Haywood, NBA director, made a very pertinent observation:

"There are suggestions that government is uneasy about approving a vaccination
programme because it has never done so with FMD.."

All too likely. What a terrible irony it is that foot and mouth, for which there have been modern marker vaccines available which have proved their worth since long before 2001, is still being "cured" with the unrepentant UK's blunt instrument of mass slaughter - yet it is Bluetongue , which does not yield to anything except eradication via vaccines, that is causing the UK finally to examine its mediaeval mindset. All the same, the process is tortuous and it is moving at the pace of a reluctant snail.

Ms Haywood, also at Brussels last week, is under no illusions about the necessity of putting in vaccine orders at once.

"..without it the UK's farmers will find it impossible to protect both their livelihoods and their stock."

As for the Zones with which parts of the country are now swathed and strangled, is DEFRA, in a misplaced determination to control the virus, actually killing farming itself? Should the whole of the British Isles bite the bullet and accept that the disease is well and truly with us?

It seems to be being assumed in the UK that Bluetongue spread faster in Holland and Belgium, where they extended the control zone to the entire country, than it did in France, where control zones were adhered to for as long as possible. But with the wildfire spread of BTv in Europe - and the fact that the infected midges have been around in the UK certainly since early August - it would seem very unlikely indeed that the control zones are not going to have to spread out wider and wider in the next weeks and months. It's the next days though that are of vital importance to those who are stuck. Those such as Frank Langrish, chairman of the British Wool Marketing Board, who think that unless the zone is extended to the whole of the country, "we in the CZ are all finished"

He says

"...I have spoken to people in Holland and Belgium about it. They all said it’s just a waste of time trying to control it. You just accept you have got it and if we are confident we are going to have a vaccine by next summer, we can live with it until then. The disease is not going to kill animals but the restrictions are going to kill thousands unless we move to one CZ."

It is a very persuasive view. All the same, there are those in the Welsh Assembly for instance who are not at all keen voluntarily to share the restrictions even if their extension would alleviate much of the problem. The NFUS' Nigel Miller too says:

"Scotland has no intention of becoming part of a UK-wide Bluetongue Control Zone, unless the disease situation changes significantly..."

Perhaps Mr Miller is unaware of just how close BTV is to Scotland now; since it has been discovered in Denmark, Poland and Scandinavia it is certainly now winging its way inexorably nearer.

German Bluetongue expert, Sabine Zentis, remains deeply sympathetic but adamant in her advice:
"... they really shouldn't extend the zone but rather give permission for all movements directly to slaughter. .. once the vector activity ceases, animals for breeding can be moved after blood tests giving a negative result for the virus. We have been living with these restrictions for 14 months now - and they are not as bad as watching animals go down with BT in large numbers..."

True. But watching healthy animals go down in large numbers because there is no other humane course - seeing them slaughtered, wasted and burned or buried because movement is impossible - this is also a black misery that seems out of all proportion to the disease itself. We really need to know whether the livestock controls are actually playing any useful part at all in preventing spread of the disease.

DEFRA's Disastrous Dithering

Merial and Intervet say that, between them, they could meet demand in 2008, provided there is a plan. If there is no coherent plan, they will have to produce vaccine based on 'first come - first served' basis, which is most certainly not the best strategy for the EU. Merial indicates they will not raise vaccine prices in case of shortages

"Don't let people confuse you," we are told by the insider who told us the above, "It is just a matter of political will".

If the EU Commission is short of funds, they should go to the European Parliament and ask for more.(Jan Mulder is a member of the budget committee. He spoke kindly to me in Brussels after the four hour session in the Parliament.)

The key points we have to get the politicians to understand are these:

The Commission promised to pay for the vaccines themselves

The Commission promised to pay 50% of the vaccination costs during the first year.

Our European neighbours are much further up the learning curve. Michel Barnier, the excellent French Minister of Agriculture, has put in an order for 33.4 million doses of vaccine. Germany plans to order 5 million doses and says "eradication of BT can only be achieved by vaccination of all susceptible farmed ruminants..."

Holland is ordering 1 or 2 million vaccine doses for sheep while the decision will be taken on the 6th of November for cattle.

Both Merial and Intervet have prototypes of vaccines available. They need only firm orders in order to get producing. After production, they need time for safety testing of vaccines. It should be possible to produce vaccines by May 2008.

DEFRA is at the very bottom of this steep learning curve and is dithering.

This, says an observer at the meeting in the Hague in early October, was very apparent. Any suggestion that DEFRA was told by vaccine companies that it was then too late for an order to be delivered in the spring is not the case. It is simply a matter of political will.

Heartbreakingly, neither DEFRA nor even the British MEPs are up to speed. Precious time is being frittered away while defeatist nonsense is being spread about on the subject of bluetongue vaccine. Talk of a mere 'firefighting' amount or that vaccines will be terribly expensive "due to demand" or that since the EU is offering support out of a "very limited pot" - all this is DEFRA defeatism and bewilderment and is leading to no action at all. In short, an excuse for a headless chicken to run about in circles.

Dr Ruth Watkins - who most certainly is up to speed - gave a talk yesterday to the Pedigree Beef Society Group at an emergency Bluetongue meeting at Stoneleigh.

The Powerpoint presentation that she gave as an illustration to her talk really is a crash course in 'all you need to know about Bluetongue'. She concludes that inactivated vaccine is absolutely vital for us and a firm order must be made - now.

(FOOTNOTE We hear this morning from a reliable source that DEFRA may, after all, be ordering vaccine "or will do shortly". One wonders, as always, at the entrenched mindset where everything must be kept secret. Paranoia reigns - usually a symptom of a deeper illness. But if this is true - if - then at least we can stop banging on about ordering vaccine.)

The Midges arrived, safe and well, on August 4th

Informed voices are starting to be raised in earnest about the desperate Bluetongue situation.

(The culicoides wing looks like this, actually)

The increasingly vocal European Livestock Alliance has put forward a Resolution to which governments other than my own are most certainly listening:

"the disease situation does not allow further inaction... European Governments must act swiftly and decisively in order to ensure large scale vaccine production as soon as possible ...Governments, European Commission/ European Parliament, and the various stakeholder groups" should "immediately develop Plans of Action regarding the species to be vaccinated, vaccination schedules, required vaccination coverage and allocation of available vaccine stocks within Europe as soon as they become available."

One of the leading lights of the ELA is that most experienced and world renowned expert in fighting animal disease, Paul Sutmoller. An opinion on BTV biosecurity sent to Dr. Sutmoller by fellow scientist Geoff Letchworth, DVM, Ph.D, makes very clear that the present stymying of BTV vaccine production by DEFRA is potentially catastrophic.

Professor Letchworth wrote:

"The unfortunate situation of one of the world's preeminent vaccine companies being precluded from producing a bluetongue vaccine to protect animals against an ongoing epidemic prompts me to weigh in on the subject of bluetongue biosafety."

He says that the virus is not going to be killed by an English or even the most extreme Arctic winter. It is here to stay.

Yet DEFRA is still expressing worries about the possible escape of a virus that cannot infect animals unless actually injected. Prof Letchworth is tactful but adamant:

"...worries about rigorous biocontainment requirements would be counterproductive if they delayed or prevented the use of vaccine ... the past year's experience has shown that not having a vaccine is a major risk."

(See Prof Letchworth's opinion.)

But how grateful we must be for the knowledge that IAH and the seconded Met Office man can, with such expertise, observe, analyse and chart the movements of the bluetongue virus carrying midge:

"Overnight on 4/5 August was considered ideal in respect of conditions for midge take-off, safe transit and landing."

The culicoides, then, evidently enjoyed a pretty carefree passage to our shores.

The IAH seems not to be aware that their pride in all the data collected "to monitor the likely midge development in the area and help to identify areas for further spread of disease in the area..." is of precious little help to the livestock farmers in the straitjacket of DEFRA restrictions. They are caught far more tightly than any midges could have been in DEFRA's inspired but non-existent sticky nets.

Can it really be possible, as it is most certainly rumoured to be, that DEFRA believes it can do without vaccine? That under the banner of the egregious Fred Landeg, the Battle of Britain against the Midge can be won without weapons? Vaccination languishes impotently at the Merial site at Pirbright - so now nothing is left except the lives and livelihoods of those on the front line.

And now for another food scare, courtesy of the Food Standards Agency

Just when sheep farmers felt that there could be nothing left to hurl at them, the Food Standards Agency has chosen to create another lamb scare. The BBC article and that of the Telegraph this morning create more confusion than they clear up.

In the past, idiotic warnings about the risks from eating lamb have caused problem after problem for producers but we really thought the nuisance must cease once Ben Bradshaw finally and quietly at the end of January admitted,

"the prevalence of BSE in the UK sheep population is most likely zero."

But no. Today we read news that will have people avoiding lamb like the proverbial plague. Any mention of babies will do it and, sure enough, this latest "food alert" is that humans and babies could be at risk if they eat lamb.

An abattoir "vet" apparently thought he could possibly smell sheep dip on one carcase - but even then there had not been enough time for any drug to have passed into the meat. What will certainly not register as warnings fly from shopper to shopper is the fact that the relevant drug (that never had time to reach the meat) has never been shown to cause harm to humans, the risk of contamination is negligible and that any meat that could even possibly have been suspect was removed on Friday.

Cynical onlookers may well be watching with satisfaction. See warmwell.com

POSTSCRIPT I have been taken to task - quite possibly correctly - over this last paragraph. Chris writes, "Credit to the vigilant officers I say - the public deserve protection from these chemicals; the villains of the piece are the abattoir buyers; this may have been a careless oversight, although I doubt it.
Needless to say, the timing is dreadful!"

However, another update via email is even more interesting: "I heard this week (before this story broke) that a lorry load of sheep for slaughter had been impounded at an abattoir in the North, due to 'taint' . This turned out to be the use of strong anti - midge disinfectant, sprayed all over the lorry in accordance with Defra guidelines - of course - before it could travel with slaughter stock to an abattoir outside the bluetongue zones. The smell had been picked up in their fleece from the lorry.
Don't know if this could be the basis for this bit of mischief as well?"

A weakness in the system

Hilary Benn has chosen this precise moment to tell the EFRA Select Committee that that there are swingeing cuts to be made in animal health...
So in spite of the looming death of livestock farming, the threat of bluetongue, foot and mouth, TB, and a host of other zoonoses on the move towards us, some of which could affect or even kill humans, animal health doesn't really matter.

"I am keen to make progress on savings in animal health..."

As for the escape of virus - it was just a

"weakness in the system"

Yes. One could say that.

Aghast to hear that animal health doesn't really matter would have been those gathered in Washington for the OIE conference They are, dare we say, more influential than Mr Benn, and not only know the opposite to be true but are saying so loud and clear:

"Healthy animals are crucial for the future of human race"

said Dr. David Nabarro, United Nation System Influenza Coordinator

"emerging animal diseases, three quarters of which are zoonotic, are set to become more and more part of the world landscape...the international community will be required to take an increasingly active long-term role in a global system of animal disease prevention and control."

said Dr. François Le Gall of the World Bank.

"only one country which does not comply may endanger the entire planet"

said Bernard Vallat, Director General of OIE,

The OIE conference brought together the eminent voices of specialists of both animal and public health, World Bank economists and experts in development. All renowned worldwide. They had gathered to discuss ways of dealing with zoonoses in the globalised world - and one of their major conclusions?

The costs of preventing major animal diseases are significantly less than those associated with outbreaks

Hilary Benn is widely acknowledged to be a nice man. He is nice, gentle and earnest, his father is liked and admired even by former enemies - and Hilary himself is a good man and, whisper it quietly, a vegetarian. What rotten luck to be handed the poisoned chalice of DEFRA just in time for the floods, pestilence and plagues to arrive.
But he is the wrong man, pursuing the wrong policies in the wrong government. We are seeing some wretched decisions being made.

Can the government really be watching the demise of farming with complacency and even satisfaction? Can those who talk blithely of the need to get rid of farmers really not know that the end of traditional livestock farming means the end of UK self sufficiency, the end of the much loved rural landscape, the end for many dependent wildlife species who need livestock farming and the end of unique skills and family traditions that will change for ever the heart and face of Britain?


The crisis in farming, particularly in the hilly areas of England, Wales and Scotland, is of enormous importance to Britain as a whole. It can never be put into reverse once it reaches a critical point. The fact that the opposition parties appear ignorant of these vital matters too is yet another indication of the depths to which the parliamentary system has sunk - a 'weakness in the system' that threatens even greater danger to us all than the escape of virus that could, with vaccination, have been contained and remedied within days.

This could finish us

The BTV-8 strain of Bluetongue has been a problem in Northern Europe for over two years but the EU, for all its macho, centralised strength and influence, will not in this instance take control. Instead, the big boss leans back in his swivel chair and says to his now impotent underlings, "It is up to you. Decide what to do. Get on with it."

But the UK is dithering.

The virus, carried by thousands upon thousands of adult female midges must be zapped fast. If BTV-8 vaccine production at Merial is still being held up by an edict from DEFRA then the whole of livestock farming in the UK is at risk and we are in deep trouble. The anti-vaccination mindset at DEFRA is very heavily entrenched. Even if lip service is being paid to the undeniable truth that only vaccination works on Bluetongue - nothing is at present being done. Like the EU itself, the tiny culicoides midges are experts in vast empire building. Their destructive power is not going to be stopped by boundaries - and this power, like the boundaries themselves, is growing all the time.


Germany has realised the urgency of the situation and an emergency meeting has been held so that firm orders for BTV-8 vaccines can be dispatched. Are the Germans getting their towels on the deckchairs first? If so, good for them.
They have understood that actual supplies of vaccine do not magically appear without firm orders. Vaccine producers cannot be expected to work blind without knowing how many million doses are going to be required. They are not funded as a public service - and can get their fingers badly burned. Intervet could not claim compensation a little while ago when CSF vaccines had to be thrown away because the presumed orders never materialised.

The Chief Veterinary Officers of all affected European countries are the ones - whether they realise this or not - who are responsible for giving vaccine companies a firm commitment for vaccine orders. Getting adequate supplies will depend on those adequate firm orders.

The EU seems to be prepared to be generous in funding - but it is down to each member state to order supplies. Contact Debby Reynolds or Fred Landeg to request that a firm commitment for supplies be ordered. Merial at Pirbright is furthest on with this work. It will be catastrophic if DEFRA continues to delay permission when there is in this work, as Professor Spratt pointed out, no danger to man nor beast.

Is farming being left to die because DEFRA and its masters thinks all the meat needed to feed the UK can be imported?

I was told, off the record in Brussels, that the UK would prefer to import all meat and want to be shot of their own farmers. Perhaps it is thought that they cost too much in political embarrassment, subsidies and compensation.

Well, there are a few problems. Such a sanguine view of the future fails to appreciate record-high oil prices and turbulent financial markets. The Financial Times today is warning

"a rise in inflation would trigger global interest rate increases, and this in turn could mark the beginning of a severe global recession"

When warmwell first began to track the price of oil in April 2004 (See oil page) we were amazed by the fact that the price of a barrel was edging towards 50 dollars. Today, bets being taken on its reaching 100 look safe. It had reached 90 dollars on friday.

As for wheat, the notion that wheat will always be available somewhere has been proved wrong. Bad harvests or outlooks in Australia, India, Pakistan, Texas and elsewhere have left countries who depended on reliable supplies scrambling for it. The price has skyrocketed. When other foodstuffs become scarce the politicians who have turned their backs on home-grown food are going to be in trouble. Hungry crowds are not interested in words.

"We have to keep in mind the awesome pace of change and realise how little time is left to act"

James Lovelock, that gentle, brilliant scientist whose fear for Gaia is more and more justified, has been warning us for some time now:

"our nation is now so urbanised....we are dependent on the trading world for sustenance; ...we have to keep in mind the awesome pace of change and realise how little time is left to act, and then each community and nation must find the best use of the resources they have to sustain civilisation for as long as they can."

A top Defra adviser recently spoke disparagingly to a farmer about how the UK is now in a

"post agricultural era"

This might well explain the catastrophic ignorance among those directing policy. What they cannot see are the dangers of allowing livestock farming to die a slow death.

Dying a fast death is what a heartbreaking number of lambs on Frank the Wool's farm are pretty certain to face. His "diary of a bluetongue farmer" ought to be being read by everyone. You can read such things at www.fwi.co.uk/Community/forums - but not in the newspapers. Most of them, it seems, are colluding in keeping silent about the death of lambs and of agriculture. The public are not being made aware that hundreds upon hundreds of healthy animals are, yet again, paying the price of ineffective disease controls. The price the farmers are paying is causing them to say, "This could finish us."

Frank the Wool says

" If the government will not order the BTV8 vaccine this week (and pay for it) then we might as well accept that there is little point in trying to continue sheep farming..."

He says, if, as is all too likely, it becomes impossible to sell his sheep on Friday

".... we will be forced to resort to on farm slaughter and burial for the store lambs.I doubt we will be given the luxury of a £15.00 disposal scheme as they have in Scotland and Wales. We will also have to make the hard decision to slaughter the ewe lambs and assess the maximum number of ewes that we have a chance of putting to the Tup. The surplus ewes will also have to be killed."

Most heartbreaking of all, we read now that infected midges have probably long since moved on to bite more animals. All the sheep tested on Frank's farm were negative but his two Rams had been bitten by infected midges. His 19 cattle were extremely healthy but 5 of them were both sero positive and also positive to antibodies. This means, of course, that they were infected some time ago (at least ten days). They are not contagious to other animals but midges can get infected - and move on. Midges should be allowed to bite only vaccinated immune cattle and therefore not get infected!

Next year not only will cattle be infected but also many more sheep as there will be many, many more infected midges.

The UK's present pitiful stable-door-slamming disease controls are killing animals not the virus.

But there is even worse. Disease control depends on farmers. They are the front line defenders because they can spot the first symptoms. If farmers feel they are going to be stuck and stymied and harassed as a result of reporting notifiable disease, going to have to slaughter and waste the animals they have looked after, then they are going to stop reporting disease.

Counting for something

At the start of our two-day conference, (the combined ELA/EU FMD&CSF Coordination Action meetings held in Brussels on 17th and 18th of October 2007) farmers, vets, stakeholders and scientists, were welcomed to that semi-circle of seats, each with its own headset and microphone that is the Parliament chamber in Brussels.
United in a tentative optimism, we had come together from Holland, Britain, France, Germany, Norway, Switzerland and even the USA to listen and to question. In the UK, an unaccountable Ministry that gives the impression that animals count for nothing and that it is farming families who should bear the brunt both of animal diseases and the arbitrary controls to slap them down and stamp them out, is getting increasingly hard to stomach - but the fact that the MEPs had wanted us to come seemed a very promising start. Lily Jacobs of the Agriculture and Rural Development Committee, opened the afternoon's discussions with some statements that seemed promising too:

"animals must be seen as more than mere animal products"

and that

"vaccination should not affect value"

So optimism seemed at last to be justified. However, as some of us were able to say, emergency FMD vaccination (always so frustratingly "considered") is not going to be acceptable to those who resist it while the EU rules continue to penalise it. Insistence that trade is held up for a further three months, together with the complex meat treatments demanded, is simply not underpinned by the science. There were murmurs of support from behind and around when this was said but, to general dismay, grim shakings of the head by several of those facing us could be seen. The extra three month ban was defended in terms that made no sense at all to the scientists among us.

There are, it seems, persistent carriers of the dogma that FMD infection, stamped out at any cost in blood and unhappiness, is better than FMD elimination by the safe, potent, modern vaccines that can so successfully distinguish diseased from vaccinated animals.

It was a blow - the more so since it doesn't seem credible that this can be anything more than a thin disguise for protectionism. But the harm it causes to farm animals, farming families and to farming itself is incalculable and, as one of the gentle farmers at the conference later told us with such passion, the effects of 2001, let alone this latest misery, are still taking their economic and emotional toll. He said that in 2001, DEFRA had said that lambs had to be starving to qualify for the payments of the welfare cull

"We chose to feed them and ended up almost starving ourselves."

We were cheered by the robust assertion that expecting the farming families to foot the bill when they have no say in policy nor guarantees of efficiency is mere "taxation without representation" and unacceptable. But gloom returned at the news that the "Community Animal Health Policy" document, in its draft form, had actually had many references to "welfare" crossed through by the CVOs themselves. It made some of us very thoughtful.

This is not the place for a detailed report of the rest of the two day meeting. A great deal of ground was covered; there were experts with a refreshing manner and a grasp of their subjects that made listening a pleasure. Topics ranged from the practicalities of vaccine production to the importance of the genetic pool in rare breeds, from the skills on the ground needed in a crisis to the little known habits but boundlessly successful spread of the culicoides midge - and much in between. New friendships were forged, assumptions challenged without rancour, questions raised and answered - and a forum for change in the evolving European Livestock Alliance began to look increasingly possible. The speakers joined together at the front for a final question and answer session, the sun beamed in and everyone expressed warm appreciation towards ELA and the Coordination Action organisers for the hard work that had paid off so handsomely.

Even the disasters were not as bad as they might have been. Two of the most eminent of the party had been stuck in a traffic jam for six hours while the rest of us were in the EU parliament but had safely arrived and were smiling wryly at us on our return to the hotel. British Airways had managed to mislay both Roger Breeze's suitcase and the rapid diagnostic machine that was to have been demonstrated to all. It finally arrived at the Hotel reception area, safe and sound, the day after most delegates had left and very early on the morning of Dr Breeze's own departure. Roused at an ungodly hour to see it in operation after all, I was grateful to the French train strike that meant I too was still at the hotel. I can personally attest that getting a sample into the machine (it looked like a large toaster) is easy and safe. Once inside, the sample is locked irreversibly into its small cassette and can later be disposed of with no danger of cross contamination or leakage. My training took less than five minutes but I could operate such a machine in the field, see the results transmitted by the internet and then dispose of the sealed sample with as much confidence as any enthusiastic young operator in Kazakhstan or Uzbekistan.

Why there? Because, although not yet in sophisticated Europe, a paradigm shift in disease control is taking place. Irony of ironies it is happening in the former Soviet bloc countries. Driven by the need to protect the world from the biological warfare threats of former times, countless dollars and expertise are being poured into Eastern Europe. The Cold War development of pathogens and biological warfare is being sent into reverse there with the result that we are going to see diseases eliminated actually within our own lifetimes - many of those very diseases that are at present merely being swatted at by Europe with its regulations, arbitrary controls, agribusiness interests and absurdly centralised control freakery.


This progress from the East is unstoppable. The overall system that uses such machines will soon be in operation everywhere to pinpoint disease and target it efficiently. It isn't going to be stopped by DEFRA disapproval. It isn't going to be stopped by anything. Like the amazing success of Wikipedia, Google and the Internet itself - the opportunity to claim information without its having been channelled or diverted first will give back to ordinary people a large measure of control over their lives. Will we have long to wait before we see such a transformation happening in our own countries? Rather than years I think we can start counting the months. The impertinence of bureaucratic interference can be consigned to its inevitable obscurity. When technology allows to everyone who needs it access to information, democracy is alive and well - and it seems certain that this particular access to information will soon help ensure that our animals remain so too.

Photos: Moira Linaker