Originally from: chris stockdale
                        
Jane,

 it was lovely to meet you last week at Julia's FMD exhibition in Stroud. That event,a lot of people felt, with the play and get-together afterwards, marked a turning point in the FMD episode, a sort of closure, not that we will forget. For a while now the majority even of the hard core activists seemed to have been suffering from burn-out, of emotion, time or finances.Obviously, the FMD Forum will continue with it's work, as will others, fortunately including warmwell, and professionals in the field like Keith Sumption, but at this juncture I would like to take the opportunity, speaking as someone who did experience the cull at first hand, to thank you for all the many, many hours of selfless unremunerated work you have put in.I hope that when you have had a rest you will find new ways to put your experience to good use,I'm sure that these channels will inspire afresh. The 'Hearts of .. 'is a good idea that got sidelined (or trampled) in the rush. It may yet, in some form or other, get dusted off, although I can see the idea of duplicating the mechanisms of governance appearing ridiculous in some quarters, especially Centralising ones.

 Bill was talking about defeatism last night ; I don't see it that way. Yes, we lost in 2001, no question, but, and it is a big but, we are not allowing them to re-write the History. More and more of the movers and shakers are coming over to the point of view they really ought to have held , if not in the first place, then at least the second or third; better late than never. The big challenge now is to sort the Contingency Plans, agree the protocols, etc, etc. but courtesy of the House of Lords and the efforts of which we are all aware, the stone is rolling uphill. Of course the Government aren't going to give up Office over it, it would be unrealistic to expect such. Weasel words cover a lot, for example 'flexibility' could mean to vaccinate or it could mean another bloodbath, but at least they offer scope for compromise; indeed I would also argue for flexibility in the Contingency plan, as Dr North said, we don't want a mandatory knee-jerk vaccination programme if it's only one case. That said, would you draw down the first half milion doses automatically on confirmation of first case; the financing for such will have to be thought through so that CVO's are not overly cautious of spending (rather than protecting), presumably as part of a 'pay whether we use it or not' formula to enable profitable vaccine production and storage. Perhaps short life antigen could be donated to the global control /eradication programme Margaret Beckett is urging, following Fred Brown's plea for the same, so any write off would be for the good of the global community and thereby in our interest anyway.

So no, I don't think defeatism is called for, but neither is Champagne; just more work to be done. Incidentally, at some point we are going to have to discuss what we feel about the use of recombinant technology in vaccines. Do we accept non-recombinant (ie GM) vaccines or will we endorse recombinant? I'm sure these pages will keep you on the go.

 On behalf of the farmers on this group, and the many others not on it who benefited from your work, thank you Jane,
 with best wishes, Chris.