f&m uk

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The Independent (London) March 4, 2001, Sunday:

THE PLAGUE THAT NEVER WAS:

FOOT AND MOUTH SHOULD NOT BE A CRISIS.

WE HAVE ALL BEEN MISLED BY THE MEN FROM THE MINISTRY BYLINE:

Geoffrey Lean

 

As funeral pyres light

up the night sky and barriers go up all over Britain's

broad acres - farming and the countryside face their biggest

crisis, and their greatest opportunity, since the Second

World War. Yet - despite the draconian measures - foot and

mouth is a mild disease, from which animals recover

naturally and quickly. It has only been turned into a

disaster by the heedless intensification of agriculture

over the past 50 years. By yesterday, 51 herds had caught

the disease - after the largest rise in cases in a single

day - and 45,000 cows, sheep and pigs had been slaughtered

to try tostop it spreading. And Britain had a Keep Out

countryside. Every footpath in every national park is

closed, as are all but 20 of the National Trust's

properties, and all two-and-a-half million acres of the

Forestry Commission's land. Fixtures from the Wales v

Ireland rugby match to Crufts have been cancelled.

 

Thefarming industry, already on its knees, is staring into

the abyss and neighbouring nations wait - with fear and

fury mixed - to see how they will be affected. The crisis

has severely shaken Tony Blair, and, as senior ministers

confirmed yesterday, forced him to abandon his plans to

announce the General Election for 5 April immediately after

Wednesday's Budget. The disease's escalating effects, the

draconian control measures and the unanimously sombre tone

of commentators, all suggest that the country must be

facing a devastating killer plague. But we aren't. Foot and

mouth disease only very rarely affects people, and even

then only raises a slight temperature and a few blisters.

 

It doesn't even kill animals. As the Ministry of

Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAFF) itself admits, the

sheep, pigs and cows being slaughtered and burned would

shake it off in two or three weeks if they were allowed to

live. Vets say that it is no more serious for animals than

a bad cold for humans. Instead, it is an economic disease.

 

When animals are sick they produce less milk, and put on

less meat. MAFF asserts that cows also milk less well when

theyrecover, though late last week could produce no

scientific evidence to prove it. Yet MAFF steadfastly

refuses to countenance any relaxation of its zero

tolerancepolicy. This contrasts sharply with the enormous

tolerance it showed BSE, allowing hundreds of thousands of

diseased animals into the food chain and permitting

controls - when introduced - to be poorly enforced and

widely flouted. Yet BSE really is a terrifying plague which

has killed 80 people, slowly and horrifically, and will do

the same to thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, more

over coming decades. MAFF's reaction to the two diseases

shows where its priorities lie. It cares little for human

health. It is not even particularly bothered about sick

animals. What gets it exercised, and spurs it to emergency

action, is a threat to the profitability of agribusiness.

 

In a sane world, the economic losses caused by this mild

disease would not matter much: farmers would accept and

adjust to them, as to the fluctuations of their harvests.

 

But the crazy overintensification of agriculture, with

margins pared to the bone to produce cheap food against

foreign competition, means it simply cannot afford them.

 

Britain pioneered the intensification on this side of the

Atlantic. No European country has pursued it so

relentlessly, or has so ruthlessly driven small farmers to

the wall to benefit richer ones: more than 330,000 farms -

two -thirds of the total - have been forced out of business

since 1945. Abigail Woods - a vet who is researching the

history of foot and mouth at Manchester University,

financed by the Wellcome Trust - adds that it was Britain,

too, that pioneered the zero tolerance policy to foot and

mouth, originally to protect a few wealthy stockbreeders,

and was the first country to ban imports from countries

with the disease. Now, hoist with its own petard, MAFF has

no alternative but to continue the slaughter to stop

British meat being excluded from export markets that have

followed our lead. Intensification may not be to blame for

the outbreak of the disease, but it has turned it into a

crisis affecting the highest in the land. Mr Blair - who on

Tuesday makes his second green speech in less than six

months after more than three years of silence - told a

private Downing Street meeting of environmentalists and

businessmen on Thursday that the floods, the collapse of

agriculture and the latest scientific predictions on the

effects of global warming (reported in the Independent on

Sunday last month) showed we were now reaping the harvest

of past neglect. All this may be providing a catalyst for

change. Tony Blair has called for a national debate on the

future of agriculture. Ministers accept that policies of

the past decades have failed and are cautiously moving

towards a radical shift - from intensifying agriculture to

preserving the environment as the basis of sound farming.

 

They want to switch the bulk of the massive subsidies

given to agriculture from intensifying production to

conserving and managing the countryside. And they saythat

the foot and mouth emergency is speeding up the process.

 

They face two obstacles. The first is the European Union,

which, led by France and Germany, has resisted change. But

Germany appointed a new Green agriculture minister in the

crisis that followed the discovery of BSE in the country.

 

She has indicated that Germany will join the campaign for

reform. If it does, ministers believe they could muster the

votes to push it through. The second, much more formidable

obstacle is MAFF, which is responsible for the mess in the

first place and has lost none of its conservatism or

obscurantism. It must be allowed to obstruct no more. When

the last glows of the burnt carcasses have died away,

ministers must build one more pyre - for MAFF itself, and

the whole misguided set of entrenched interests it

represents.

 

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