There is a well known saying, 'no pain, no gain' and that will be ringing true in the minds of Milk Link’s 1,600 producers, who are on the brink of reaping just reward for 12 years of loyalty and investment.Foot-and-Mouth 10 years on
Foot-and-mouth 10 years on: Culling was 'pure madness'
AT Great Orton airfield in Cumbria, more than half a million healthy animals were slaughtered in 2001. Now the Watchtree Nature Reserve, it was described by BBC’s Countryfile as ‘a monument to the victims of this terrible disease.’
They were not ‘victims of a terrible disease’. They were victims of a terrible policy. Tests showed that of the 115 farms whose animals ended their lives in Great Orton, one sample only tested positive, with one additional “mild positive” and three “inconclusives”. (NFU’s Will Cockburn’s evidence to the Cumbria Inquiry) Yet hundreds of thousands of sheep, many pregnant or with lambs at foot, were trundled through the streets of a hushed and miserable Cumbria and into the hands of the killers.
It was pure madness. In 2001 we had excellent high potency vaccines that, applied correctly and fast, would have stopped FMD in its tracks.
America offered efficient portable rapid diagnosis machines, enabling animals to be safely tested in real time on their farms, with results returned and sent on by Internet within two hours. They were refused. These technologies are now even better – but vaccination is still only to be “considered” and portable RT-PCR diagnosis doesn’t get a single mention in the Contingency Plan.
A vaccine takes 4-5 days to lead to a strong level of immunity. We can “get ahead” of the epidemic by ensuring a sufficient number of farms are vaccinated 4-5 days ahead of any first exposure to virus.
Vaccination can be used as soon as the appropriate antigens are turned into vaccines, then applied in a ring from the outside inwards around infection.
DIVA tests distinguish between animals ever infected and those now protected by vaccination and allow for a safe return to FMD free status. The EU has a considerable fund to help here.
People who assume that the 2001 mass killing was sad but necessary don’t realise that the vast majority of the 10 million were uninfected, that killing such animals was illegal, that the policy was driven by a flawed mathematical model, that the disease was already in decline in March 2001, that there was political panic about the coming election - and that there was a level of organisational chaos that has never been properly admitted or addressed.
The notion that the public wouldn’t eat vaccinated meat is another absurdity. We were eating FMD vaccinated meat from South America in 2001, and virtually all meat today comes from animals that have been vaccinated against some disease or other.
In the highly uncertain financial climate of today with its fragile supply chains, local sources of healthy food from good farms are needed more than ever. Because of the apparent complexity of the rules surrounding vaccination in non-endemic countries, foot and mouth disease gets looked at from the wrong end of a telescope. People with the power to get things changed tend to say
“Yes, the modern technology is there, but we can’t use it because the rules are so restrictive….”
Instead , they should be saying
“All these restrictions? When we have such excellent answers to controlling FMD? This is CRAZY. Rewrite the Contingency Plan and then get the rules changed.”
The UK should cut the Gordian Knot, and follow the Dutch in putting FMD vaccination firmly at the forefront of its Contingency Plan. Other Member States would be very likely to follow suit and the outdated EU rules reconsidered. Cooperation could lead to global eradication of the virus. Smallpox and Rinderpest used to cast a similar blight on the world. Now, thanks to vaccination, they are consigned to history. Foot and mouth could be next.
Related images
Also in: Foot-and-mouth 10 years on: Culling was 'pure madness'
Foot-and-mouth 10 years on: 'I fought NFU from the start' - Gibson
Foot-and-mouth 10 years on: Outbreak was 'worse than Falklands'
Foot-and-mouth 10 years on: Was it right not to vaccinate?
Foot-and-mouth 10 years on: Contiguous cull debate rages on
Foot-and-mouth 10 years on: Wales hit out of the blue
Foot-and-mouth 10 years on: The industry looks back
Foot-and-mouth 10 years on: Sir Ben Gill looks back
Foot-and-mouth 10 years on: 'Sinking feeling' as disease was confirmed
Foot-and-mouth 10 years on: How the disease hit Scotland
Foot-and-mouth 10 years on: How auction marts coped
Foot-and-mouth 10 years on: Have the lessons been learned?
Foot-and-mouth 10 years on: Farmers share their stories
Foot-and-mouth 10 years on: 'Blair fired me over FMD'
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Readers' comments (10)
cyberdoyle | 25 February 2011 12:47 pm
until the sheepwalkers wake up this policy will never happen. Time to shake up the jobsworths and get some common sense back into this country. good article on sheepwalking here: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2007/02/sheepwalking.html
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Dr Colin Fink | 25 February 2011 1:27 pm
Well done Mary . Not a word wasted
It is high time that policy and contingency plans are based exactly on the information within this article. Good quality vaccinated British meat could also supply the army which presently is running on Argentinian and Brazilian (F&M vaccinated) meat.
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Anne Lambourn | 25 February 2011 2:18 pm
An excellent article. It was the failure to use intelligently the highly sensitive and specific diagnostic tests already available in 2001 at IAH, Pirbright, an OIE designated FMD laboratory, that was the real tragedy. Not only were these tests very accurate indeed (Kitching and Donaldson letter to Vet Record May 2001), but they could also detect presence of virus before clinical signs were evident in animals. The use of such tests was recommended by the Northumberland Report 30 years earlier, back in 1968, but sadly, Sir David King, in his evidence to the EFRA Select Committee in 2001 stated that there were no such tests available. Diagnosis was frequently on clinical signs only (very inadvisable according to Dr Kitching, former head of Exotic Diseases Research at IAH) and the theoretical spread of disease was computed using flawed mathematical models ( Dr Paul Kitching's Channel 4 interview 21 April 2001). Tests inexplicably were only used for "epidemiological purposes" and not to determine whether killing should take place. The result was that huge numbers of healthy animals were unnecessarily killed, livelihoods unnecessarily destroyed, and unnecessary suffering inflicted on farmers, communities and animals. The true map of the occurrence of FMD in 2001 is very different from that officially portrayed. There was not the cryptic infection in sheep in Scotland, and sheep were not the "silent spreaders" (Thrusfield et al), as is also revealed by the test results of sheep killed in the mass slaughter at Great Orton. The myth that negative tests were not accurate should be dealt with once and for all. If the tests were carried out according to correct procedures, and stored and transported correctly, then the lab based tests available in 2001 provided the necessary degree of accuracy, as confirmed also by Joyce Quinn in a Parliamentary Answer in May 20001 when she emphasised that all negative test results were double checked.
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H.D.Coryn MRCVS | 25 February 2011 8:03 pm
Should be compulsory reading for everyone in Defra from the Minister down.
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Pat | 25 February 2011 9:25 pm
Excellent article and overview, Mary.
Thankyou.
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Captain Bryn Wayt | 25 February 2011 10:23 pm
Mary Critchley once again writes with more honesty and heart than the combined force of MAFF/DEAFra did in the whole of FMD2001 fiasco. BLAIR, GILL and Nick Brown were caught with their pants down - GILL and BROWN knew nothing of the science of FMD, and they should have done. BLAIR's lack of leadership following GILL's stupidity in saying SLAUGHTER everything gave the world the worst scene of animal slaughter since Roman times. The NFU boss, HMG and MAFF were ignorant and culpable in costing this country 60 farmer's life's and well over £20 BILLION to the taxpayer.
How come URUGUAY managed so well from April 2001 till 1st Nov 2001 dealing with their FMD outbreak - the same type A strain the UK had? Did they blindly slaughter over 10 million animals - NO. They vaccinated 11 million and left 12 million sheep to graze. When they found out they had FMD they killed sick animals on-site and buried them onsite.
Within 6 days URUGUAY started "ring vaccination", and even vaccinated sick animals. When the FMD spread, they started a country-wide vaccination programme and farmers were issued with kits free of charge and went round on motor-bikes to speed up the vaccination process - THEY did the vaccinating (unlike the tiny amount of vaccination teams which are allegedly on stand-by here in the UK). They knew slaughtering everything was a stupid and costly idea, so they STOPPED the "stamping out" policy whether animals had signs of FMD or not. URUGUAY sensibly did not vaccinate the 12 million sheep herd (time/money/level of infection). They left all the pigs alone too - unlike the UK who were driven to slaughtering them with shotguns in some cases - which made Ms M. Beckett lie to the EU FMD Committee saying no animal cruelty had taken place throughout the crisis!!
Readers should take note that all this activity was completed by the farmers/vets by the 7th June 2001 (start date 24 April 2001). So in within 6 weeks URUGUAY had it 'sorted' whilst here in the UK was thick in funeral pyre smoke of healthy animals due to shambolic overall incompetence of those who should have known better. There were 48,518 farms in URUGUAY which were covered (and saved) by the emergency vaccination programme - and of course they exercised more common sense by giving out free booster jabs too, which were calculated to give 99-100% protection against the FMDv.
NO ANIMALS WERE SLAUGHTERED AFTER APRIL 2001 IN URUGUAY.
It took their government only ONE WEEK to realise what was the best and most humane thing to do - throw out the "Free from FMD (without vaccination)". Unlike the bumbling ineptitude of Blair and his scientific advisors, along with other numbskulls advocating SLAUGHTER, SOS, DC's SLAUGHTER, if in doubt SLAUGHTER.
After two visits by the EU Commission URUGUAY was given permission to export to Europe again (de-boned meat). The cost of compensating the farmers in URUGUAY was US$1.87 - contrast that to the £20BILLION in the first 6 months to the UK economy; down to HMG departments not having a clue what to do but KILL, KILL, KILL. More than 10 million animals were slaughtered; 10509 farms slaughtered out of which <13% were LAB tested as positive. 8000 farms taken out when NO visible signs of FMD present. 3305 farms taken out by the stupid "Contiguous Premises" rule laid down by Imperial College.
Take figures from CUMBRIA "SOS" figures 41 farms, 37 tested, ZERO positive.DC's taken out of which "Contiguous" 680 only 58 tested and ZERO proved positive. Take DEVON at the other end of the country; "SOS" 39 farms, 39 tested, ZERO positive. DC's 801 farms taken out, tested 28 and ZERO positive. "Contiguous" 553 taken out, only 8 tested and ZERO positive.
Helen O'Hare (Vet) wrote a terrific 'paper' about the utter mess, and concluded, "It was a holocaust and was driven by economics" - and of course Tony Blair had an election to win!
The FMD Contingency Plan as it stands this day (25 Feb 2011) is as bad as it was 10 years ago. The people who will flap around in offices will be joined by Health & Safety Teams before a vet steps foot on a farm, and the modern science such as launched astronauts in Discovery yesterday from US soil, will be on a shelf wasting away for the "pen-side test" kit is not mentioned nor is the idea that farmers could vaccinate their own animals.
Farming is something this government wants to ignore so we can be fed by cheap, inferior foods from the ever-growing EU machine.
DEFRA wants to waken up and get a copy of URUGUAY's plan for dealing with an FMD outbreak - even use the 2001 plan, for the one on standby today is a recipe for an action replay of FMD2001. Mark my words.
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Anonymous | 26 February 2011 5:09 pm
Are Defra making the same mistake with Bovine tb.
Cattle vaccination will solve the problem.
Time to RETHINK our Btb problem!
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Matt | 27 February 2011 11:52 am
I might regret posting this (I hope not), but I've been writing about my experiences when I worked on Foot and Mouth in 2001.
It's a work in progress, with new posts being released each morning, and has been going for a couple of weeks now.
Here is a link:
http://cattlekiller.blogspot.com/2011/01/why.html
This is a link to the first post, please read it from the begining; if you click on 'newer post' in the bottom left hand corner, it will take you to the next post in order.
It's just getting to the interesting stage, and the posts that are scheduled for release on Monday and Tuesday were the hardest to write so far.
I'm sorry if it upsets or offends anyone; it's not my intention.
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Captain Bryn Wayt | 27 February 2011 8:15 pm
Matt, I will be more than interested in what you have to say - because the present FMD Contingency plan goes exactly the same way as the one in 2001. I hope you know MAFF/Defra LIED through their teeth about the number of animals slaughtered.
No "lessons" have been learned as the numb-nuts in MAFF/DEAFra are stuck in the past.
Have you seen the TRUE figures for DEVON?
"SOS" 39 farms, 39 tested, ZERO positive. DC's 801 farms taken out, tested 28 ZERO positive.
"Contiguous" 553 taken out, 8 tested ZERO positive". ALL a complete bloody waste.
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Charles Henry | 4 March 2011 2:59 pm
There are seven different types and more than 60 subtypes of FMD virus. A vaccine has to be prepared specifically for the actual serotype at each outbreak. Countries that are designated FMD-free without vaccination have the greatest access to export markets, and therefore many. developed nations, including Canada, the United States, and ourselves, work hard to maintain their current FMD-free without vaccination status. . FMD vaccines are safe, and effective but to start trying to compare them with the bTB experimental BCG vaccines which some are; a failing vaccine that is itself produced using attenuated M.bovis bacilli (a bacterium) is naivety in the extreme.
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