Foot-and-mouth outbreak: Your views

Readers' comments (59)

LET us know what do you think about this lastest outbreak, and how it has been handled? Click this link to leave us your messages.

• Hazel Humphreys | 6 August 2007 12:11 pm

  Given this week's reported foot and mouth outbreak, we need more than ever to ensure the promotion of buying locally produced food and reducing food miles, not only because it will slow the spread of disease, but because British produce is quite simply the best available.

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• Gill Ward | 6 August 2007 12:12 pm

  Please save our industry. We need all the publicity we can get espeically during this Foot and Mouth crisis

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• Bill T. | 6 August 2007 3:35 pm

  The Scottish Executive was quick off the mark to allow on-farm burials of fallen stock while the movement ban perists - come on Defra, follow suit before the smell gets too bad.!

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• Jeremy Sample | 6 August 2007 3:37 pm

  I see that BBC News acted in their usual responsible manner by hovering a helicopter over the infected farm. We know FMD can carry on the wind. so is a giant fan over the area really such a good idea?

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• J. Green | 6 August 2007 3:38 pm

  I just cannot believe it's safe to transport animals across the country to Somerset for incineration if there are plants nearer to the outbreak. It seems to undermine all good work that has been done in trying to quickly isolate and stop the spread of the infection.

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• Mike Redmond | 6 August 2007 3:46 pm

  They keep saying on the news that farmers are shocked and angry that Pirbright is probably the source of the disease but I don't know anyone that is shocked. It comes as no suprise at all to hear that one of its so-call top research centres is in a pitiful state of repair.

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• Malcolm S | 6 August 2007 3:46 pm

  message to mr benn and mr brown - we do not want carcases infected with FMD brought into our county. There's a lot of livestock in Somerset and we do not want this virus. Why can't you incinerate them nearer to the farm?

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• jayne madeley | 6 August 2007 3:48 pm

  Thank goodness everything is moving quicker this time. However both my husband and I were on farms in 1967, we were kids, the animals were diaginosied visually. In my dad's case he spotted it at breakfast time and all animals were dead by teatime on the same day. My husband remembers it being as quick. He remembers his dad saying between the phone call to the vet and him arrivng more animals showed symptoms it is so quick. Why was a team not waiting to go in on Friday night to cull the animals? It would have been kinder for the farmer and his family and the animals already with the disease. So for the third time we live through this. This time our problems revolve around two boys with their own animals. A friend with sheep whose wife is in hospital recovering from a brain turmor operation. We don't know if it is good or bad news yet! But worse of all in calf heifers 5 miles away due to calve in the next 3 weeks. WE were fetching them home this weekend. The gateway was so wet into the field we could not get into to get them before! They are at a adult social service farm. They graze some ground the centre does not need for its animals. There is no milking facilities and nowhere to calve the animals if they need help. We will have to go to them if they do need help and that of course then puts the animals at risk there and at home. Let's hope the license system is in place soon so we can get our animals home.

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• Gill Hesselgrave | 6 August 2007 4:18 pm

  It seems stupid to me that the two 3 km protection zones are not joined up. If the virus did escape from the laboratory and was windblown to the second part of the farm, why would it not have landed in the area between the two zones. I would have thought this would have been an elementary precaution to take rather than sticking rigidly to 3km from the centres. I realise the second one made have been infected by being an outpost of the main farm, but that isn't proven yet.

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• Jane Barribal | 6 August 2007 8:43 pm

  I would urge everyone to look at the websites http://www.farmtalking.com and http://www.warmwell.com Both have been concerned that the correct legal advice and scientifically proven information is available to the faming community and others ever since the FMD disaster of 2001. They have published information concerning PCR Pen side testing and the use of FMD vaccine to contain control and eradicate the disease as well as up to date news concerning the current situation.

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