Foot and Mouth Disease

Right : Hour old lamb being taken for slaughter
Photo by John Cogil in Irish Times.
Click photo for more.

Foot and Mouth is a highly contagious disease, mainly of cloven-hoofed animals (Not to be confused with the human disease Hand, Foot and Mouth). People very rarely get it, and the effects in people are said to be relatively mild (But see letter from Stephen MacWhite) . It doesn't necessarily make affected animal meat unsafe to eat, but it weakens animals, causes increased mortality among their young, and, according to received wisdom, a widespread outbreak could effectively destroy the agricultural economy, and severely damage the wider economy, of a country like Ireland (But see Alternative View below). In February and March this year, all sporting and social events, even St. Patrick's Day parades, were cancelled or postponed in Ireland, in an attempt to prevent the disease spreading from Britain and Northern Ireland.

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UPDATE March 22nd.
The first case of foot and mouth has been confirmed in the Republic of Ireland, two miles across the border from the first Northern Ireland case.
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Update April 24th.
No further confirmed outbreaks in the republic of Ireland. For the first month or so of the outbreak, people in Britain or Northern Ireland were asked to postpone their visits to Ireland unless absolutely necessary, and Irish people were asked not to visit the countryside. The situation then eased, but anyone intending to travel to Ireland was asked to check the latest situation, and strictly follow disinfectant procedures, other instructions and advice upon arrival.
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UPDATE MAY 10th.
Most restrictions are being relaxed in Ireland. No further cases have been confirmed so far. The main restrictions affecting tourists are the continuing prohibitions on hill-walking and any cross-country activities. Basically, you can use the ROADS through the countryside, but you can't walk, cycle or drive over the land itself. Some visitor attractions situated on or near farmland may also be closed. Check the latest situation at the sites below. See also letter from Tourist (There has been much contradictory advice from the Department of Tourism and the Department of Agriculture).
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Update May 11th.
According to the Dept. of Agriculture website, "Access to agricultural land for recreational purposes (eg. Hillwalking, Angling, Pony trekking) is permitted with effect from 11th May 2001 provided that members of the public act responsibly , follow relevant disinfection procedures and do not have direct contact with susceptible livestock".
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Irish Tourist Board ............ Irish Dept. of Agriculture
British Government's Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries
Disinfectant Procedures

There have been over 1600 outbreaks in Britain, 12 in Holland (caused by Irish calves mixing, en route to Holland, with infected English sheep on a French farm. See Crazy Food Swap below.), 2 in France, 4 in Northern Ireland and 1 in the Republic of Ireland to date (April 16th). Although the number of cases in Britain is halving each week, as of the last week in April, literally MILLIONS of animals, diseased or healthy, have been slaughtered, and burned (which may spread the disease, according to the official report into the 1967 outbreak) or buried in huge pits. While a child could have foreseen environmental problems with this approach, it's only now that public and official concern is growing.

*** The British Independent site (which looked and worked fine) is being redesigned, so some of their links below may not work. The paper, although now owned by a conservative Irish multi-millionaire, is generally left of centre/liberal.

Alternative view by Geoffrey Lean of the (British) Independent on Sunday (4th March).
Sample : "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 they recover, though late last week could produce no scientific evidence to prove it.

Yet MAFF steadfastly refuses to countenance any relaxation of its zero tolerance policy. 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."
Full Article

Another article by Lean (25th March).
Sample : - "The crisis, it was finally admitted, was 'not under control', in direct contradiction to Mr Brown's recent assurances. Intensified agriculture had made it worse, a suggestion previously dismissed with scorn. And Mr Brown agreed with protesting farmers that the killing and burning of animals was not happening fast enough to keep ahead of the disease. There was no evidence from anywhere, it was admitted, that walkers passed on the disease, despite the closure of footpaths: indeed, the risk that even the vets who tended the sick animals would pass it on, was 'remote'. By contrast, the possibility that smoke from the incineration of animals could carry the disease was now being investigated. Above all, Mr Brown said, he was taking a "hard look" at vaccinating animals - a suggestion treated as heresy until just a few days ago - after realising it might hasten the end of the epidemic and bring forward the time when Britain could re-export its meat. He had, he said, 'a duty and responsibility" to consider it, amid increasing signs of an imminent change of policy." more

NOTE : Geoffrey Lean is writing about the situation in Britain. In Ireland, although agriculture is less intensive than in Britain, agriculture and food processing account for about 10% of GDP and employment, and a massive 25% of net trade earnings. Furthermore, 90% of Irish food output is exported. An outbreak of Foot and Mouth would probably result in many of our food exports being banned for at least a year, and, unlike in Britain, the local market could absorb very little of this. Economists disagree about the effects of a Foot and Mouth outbreak here, with some predicting possible disaster for the economy as a whole, some claiming there would be at most a 2% reduction in our growth rate (ie from 8% to 6%), and others calling for a proper cost/benefit analysis (Tourism, which is being badly hit by the crisis, is comparably in value to the affected agriculture sectors). However, the impact on the Irish economy would undoubtedly be proportionately far greater than the impact on Britain's.

Although I agree with Lean's basic points, and would like to see a policy of vaccination or of living with the disease, and although, as a vegetarian , I would like to see an end to meat eating in any case, NONETHELESS I DO NOT WANT TO SEE THE IRISH FARMING COMMUNITY RUINED, AND I DO NOT WANT TO SEE FOOT AND MOUTH DISEASE SPREAD IN THIS COUNTRY - GIVEN THE KNOWN ATTITUDE OF THE DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE, THE RESULT WOULD INEVITABLY BE THE MASS SLAUGHTER OF FARM ANIMALS AND WILDLIFE. SO I WOULD ASK EVERYONE TO FOLLOW ALL GOVERNMENT ADVICE.

Crazy Food Swap Article by Caroline Lucas, British Green MEP. Sample : - "...why is it that foot and mouth, a disease that doesn't harm humans and from which most animals recover in a matter of weeks, has virtually shut down the countryside, led to the mass slaughter of healthy animals, and crippled our tourist industry? The answer is: to ensure that we can continue to export meat in a world where politicians treat globalisation like a god....Britain imported 61,400 tonnes of poultry meat from the Netherlands in the same year that it exported 33,100 tonnes of poultry meat to the Netherlands. We also imported 240,000 tonnes of pork and 125,000 tonnes of lamb, while at the same time exporting 195,000 tonnes and 102,000 tonnes of pork and lamb respectively." more

NOTE : Some of this food swap is even more complex - apparently British lamb can legally be exported to Ireland, legally re-exported to France as Irish lamb after a few weeks, and later legally sold back to British restaurants as French lamb. Add smuggling (which caused the outbreak in Northern Ireland, and probably the subsequent outbreak in the Republic of Ireland) to this lunacy and you have a recipe for real disaster.

Some background by Gene Kerrigan of the Irish Sunday Independent (No connection with the British Independent). The Irish Independent is generally a right wing publication, sometimes runs with the hare and hunts with the hounds, and is owned by Ireland's richest man. Gene Kerrigan is their token liberal/radical, and he does a good job. Sample : "...the same State authorities that today are pretending to be shocked by the greed and criminality that brought us the (Foot and Mouth) scandal.

Not alone were blind eyes turned, but these people were treated as our best and brightest. They were held up as examples. Politicians slapped them on the back. They financed the political parties. They still do.

Anyone who questioned what was going on was a begrudger, a troublemaker, accused of practising what the sneering people denounced as "the politics of envy". Any media caveats, and they were few, had to be couched in very vague language, as the libel lawyers crouched on the sidelines, drooling, alert for a misplaced word.

Now inevitably the bill is coming in. And who will get to pay it?

In the first instance, the poor bloody animals, slaughtered by the hundreds of thousands in order to maintain foreign consumer confidence. And the underpaid and overworked meat-factory employees. Farmers who for too long turned blind eyes to the cowboys amongst them will get some compensation, but they'll lose a lot.

Of course, the large end of the bill will come to us. Consumers and taxpayers. As usual.

And when this is over, the usual few patsies will take the rap, and the secret history of Irish life will continue much as before....".
Full Article

Vegetarian Perspective Sample : "Viva! has secretly filmed inside 18 UK factory farms. Some of the scenes....require a strong stomach to watch. They include dead and rotting piglets alongside living brothers and sisters; mounds of dead pigs left in the open to decay, prey to dogs and wildlife; dead piglets beneath a sea of writhing maggots; an imprisoned sow covered in flies and blood; a pregnant sow about to give birth into her own excreta; pigs coated in their own faeces with filthy, wet concrete on which to sleep; animals with ruptures the size of footballs; pigs dragging themselves around, unable to walk.... more

VACCINATION

Slaughter 'spreading disease' Guardian Report
Sample : - "The Ministry of Agriculture's mass slaughter policy is scientifically mistaken, helps to spread the disease, is agriculturally and economically suicidal, and could be be illegal under European law, documents obtained by the Guardian suggest."

Geoffrey Lean
Sample : - "The 'total slaughter' policy - and rejection of vaccination - has unashamedly been designed to protect Britain's meat and live animal exports. These are worth �570m a year. It sounds a lot, but pales besides the �250m a week lost by Britain's tourist trade and other rural industries - and is rivalled by the �480m it has so far cost the Government to fight the disease. At worst, vaccination would mean the country lost one year of these exports; more likely, it would be three months' worth, or �140m. Even this is misleading because - as a report published today by Dr Caroline Lucas, a Green MEP shows - exports in pork and lamb are almost balanced by imports, in what she calls a 'food swap'."

Case for Vaccination
Part of the basis for the legal challenge to the British Government's mass slaughter policy.

Critique of Modern "Scientific" Farming by American poet and philosopher Wendell Berry.
Samples : -
"Let me outline...the characteristics of these opposite kinds of mind. I conceive the strip-miner to be a model exploiter, and as a model nurturer I take the old-fashioned idea or ideal of a farmer. The exploiter is a specialist, an expert; the nurturer is not. The standard of the exploiter is efficiency; the standard of the nurturer is care. The exploiter's goal is money, profit; the nurturer's goal is health - his land's health, his own, his family's, his community's."

"Why should our universities sponsor an active criticism of the fine arts...but no criticism of farming or forestry or mining or manufacturing? This question, of course, can be answered by a crude evolutionism - those who survive do not bite the corporations that feed them."

"If we can�t know with final certainty what we are doing, then reason cautions us to be humble and patient, to keep the scale small, to be careful, to go slow."

"The sciences are sectioned like a stockyard the better to serve the corporations."

"Without such a vigorous conversation originating in the universities and emanating from them, we get what we�ve got: sciences that spread their effects upon the world as if the world were no more than an experimental laboratory"

"If a tree falls in the absence of a refereed journal or a foundation, does it make a sound? The answer, in the opinion of the imitation corporate executives who now run our universities, is no."

"The 'cutting edge' (of science) is not critical or radical or intellectually adventurous. The cutting edge of science is now fundamentally the same as the cutting edge of product development."

Critique of Steve Milloy and JUNK SCIENCE
Sample : On his well-known "Junk Science" website, the apparently independent Steve Milloy apparently debunks one scare-story after another.....

Critique of Economic Growth

Latest Foot and Mouth Disease News
(Moreover's Foot and Mouth Disease news feeds are very poor)