".....The Dutch and Germans ...must be weeping at the delay"

"by a malign stroke of fate....work there is now at a halt while the clapped-out buildings are brought up to scratch." So says Clive Aslet on the subject of DEFRA's indefinite and groundless hold-up of Bluetongue vaccine at the Merial plant on the Pirbright site. Writing in the Sunday Telegraph he says that when a vaccine for Bluetongue is finally ready, there is no doubt that it will be used.

"This ought to pave the way for foot and mouth vaccine to be used as a matter of course throughout Europe.

He reminds readers that in those far-off days of August, it appeared that the Brown government had learnt the lessons of 2001. "Vaccination was talked of sympathetically. Since then, Defra has reverted to type" adding that it was the UK who pressed for Europe to be treated as a foot and mouth free zone in the first place and echoes what warmwell has always maintained,

"It is only the financial interest of a small number of livestock farmers - who would, for a time, be prevented from exporting their animals - that prevents vaccines from being used."

It is cheering to find that there are commentators talking about the ethical dimension to so-called welfare culls of animals. ".. For the meat won't be sold in supermarkets (we consumers are said to be too finicky to buy it). It will be incinerated. Won't the Third World goggle at us in appalled disbelief?"

Bluetongue hits goats in Holland

From ProMed update email

"...In a group of more than 100 goats, 10 have been found to be seriously sick. Up to now, it was not known if goats, infected with BTV-8, would develop a clinical disease.."

The UK would do well to learn from our European neighbours.

We have, also in the Sunday Telegraph, the misleading headline "Bluetongue spreads from cattle to sheep" which suggests that cattle can pass the disease on to sheep. The article fails to explain clearly enough that the only vector is the midge. Bluetongue is not contagious and it is worrying that there are still journalists writing about animal disease in the UK who appear not understand much about it and who are in danger of misleading the public. Sheep can be infected only if an infected female midge feeds on it while in the viraemic stage. They cannot be infected by cattle.

Bluetongue outbreak detected in Denmark

Denmark has had its first case of Bluetongue - in a sheep herd near Sakskobing on the island of Lolland, south of Zealand, the European Commission said today (See Alertnet.) Denmark has reported this first case as an outbreak.
It will be remembered that the UK dithered from the time of its first case on September 22 until - finally - on September 28 Defra, in the person of Fred Landeg, accepted that the UK "had an outbreak".

"Man has decidedly botched up the planet"

Most of the media continues to behave as if there is no problem. There is. An ever-descending black despair is with us. You cannot "snap out of" this one.

The stranglehold restrictions put in place to "control" foot and mouth and bluetongue show what happens if you allow animal health to pass out of the hands of those who know and care and into the surreal dreamworld of politics.
First came the EU legislation, the Directives and the Statutory Instruments. Then the 2002 Animal Health Act tidied up the loopholes. And then April Fool's Day this year saw the creation of "Animal Health" an outpost of Defra-world that merged - in the name of efficiency and as per the Hampton Review - the State Veterinary Service (SVS) the Dairy Hygiene Inspectorate (DHI), the Wildlife Licensing and Registration Service (WLRS,including the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species CITES), and the Egg Marketing Inspectorate (EMI).
Does anyone pretend that this was more than a money saving confidence trick?

Better animal health policies were not the aim. Just the determination to keep ever tighter controls on those producing food.

"We all welcome this merger," enthused Glenys Stacey, Chief Executive of the monster, using a Defra-dialect unknown in the civilised world, "it will deliver more comprehensively and with the customer in mind."

So, like passengers of British Rail, like wrongs hushed up, we are "customers", herded into a corner and comprehensively delivered into the iron grasp of DEFRA - for which we do indeed pay but for which there is no customer service. The only communications are glossy pamphlets with mind numbing demands for compliance or expressions of self congratulation (The Defra-slogan now seems to be "Enabling everyone to live within our environmental means" a piece of meaningless Defra-drivel for which we also undoubtedly paid.)
There is no remorse and no apology in Defra-world. And no criticism allowed. The 2002 Animal Health Act saw to that.

And so, with extreme sadness, we turn to this extract from an article online at www.countrylife.co.uk/blogs by Carla Carlisle with her ultimately doomed non-customer approach:

I am advised to 'check livestock twice daily'.
And this I do, taking buckets of extra feed, an apronful of windfalls, treats that make me welcome. We have two breeds. The Shetlands, small and gentle, look like the 'earth colours' section on paint charts. Born black, they evolve into taupe, chestnut, dark chocolate. If I sit on the ground, they come up to me, curious, concerned, and if I stay long enough, the older ewes lie down beside me. Then there are the Jacobs, dappled, scatty sheep with attention deficit disorders, courteous but wary.

I cannot claim that these sheep are vital to the financial future of this farm, but they provide a rhythmic sympathy with the earth that justifies everything we do here. They provide the grazing essential to the maintenance of the wildflower meadow.... Morning and evening, I check for signs of swelling and listen to the breathing beneath the symphony of crunching sheep nuts. And I pray for cold and rain. This depression doesn't feel like cowardice. It feels like the despair that André Gide described when he wrote that 'melancholy occasionally wins out: man has decidedly botched up the planet'. It is the despair of knowing that last winter was the second warmest on record, and there is no health in it.