Originally from: Mary Critchley
                        
Warmwell isn't always being updated at the moment – but today's front page may be of interest to those who still feel there should be a proper public inquiry into the foot and mouth outbreak. The links to the articles can be accessed on the website.

http://www.warmwell.com

May 28 ~ "Millions of others were unseen, unsung and uncompensated ..."

A very angry article about the foot and mouth crisis was published yesterday in the Western Morning News. It illustrates well how people who suffered are still feeling – and how very far from receding into the past is the experience of FMD 2001. Extract:
"....Some of the casualties of MAFF ineptitude were obvious – the farming families who were subjected to bullying, brutality, bureaucracy and force majeure and saw their lives' work rotting outside their windows, then going up in smoke. Millions of others were unseen, unsung and uncompensated – the farmers isolated and starved of accurate information, unable to trade or to move stock for month after month; the animals thus stranded in mires without fodder; the children subjected to ineradicable trauma; the many, many small, struggling, agriculture-related industries.
And when it was all over? It wasn't all over. It continues to this day. Hobbled businesses stagger into bankruptcy. Farms deprived of income for all that time are sold, having never recovered. One of the "lucky" victims, Bruce Ayre, who had 2,500 sheep and 250 cattle killed, said yesterday: "We're just getting back to normal now, and 'normal' will never mean the same again after we turned to our ministry for help and were rewarded with inefficiency, appalling and ignorant ministry vets, inept, bungling soldiery and slow, draconian, insensitive bureaucracy."

May 28 ~ DEFRA offers £110,000 a year for "an enthusiastic and effective ambassador for rural communities" to "make a discernible difference to rural economic productivity".
See today's Western Morning News(external link)
" .. Mr Lidington said: "If this means that Defra is going to change the way it works then that is welcome but given the record so far, I'm sceptical that it is anything more than a cosmetic gesture. "What I want to see is evidence that ministers, from Margaret Beckett downwards, are actually listening to people who are working in the countryside and are starting to address their problems.
"We have had a whole series of disasters – foot and mouth, bovine TB and farm stock burial. A great deal has gone wrong, and simply paying the salary of another Sir Humphrey isn't going to put that right.
"There is a fundamental and radical shift in approach needed by Margaret Beckett and her ministers.
"It has got to be recognition that what happens in the countryside matters. I think there is little evidence that it is regarded as a high priority." However, Anthony Gibson, regional director of the National Farmers' Union, said that the appointment could be a good thing for the farming community, although he regretted that such a rural champion did not already exist within Defra. He said: "I think it is very important that farming does have a champion to try and explain what is happening in farming to the world and make the connections between the farming community and the rest of society...."

May 28 ~ " I hope that who ever they appoint has a strong stomach, because Defra has precisely nil respect from the farming community."

Yesterday's Western Morning News (external link) on the subject of the"six-figure salary for a troubleshooter who can improve its image in the countryside in the wake of the foot and mouth crisis."
".... Beth Coles, who with her husband Patrick farms cattle and sheep in North Cornwall, said: "All I can say is that I hope that who ever they appoint has a strong stomach, because Defra has precisely nil respect from the farming community." And Ian Hodgett of Lewdown, West Devon, who fought to save 300 ewes in lamb and 50 bullocks which were condemned during the foot and mouth epidemic, warned: "Whoever takes this job will have to have common sense and brilliant communication skills, because he or she has a steep hill to climb."
The appointment has been seen at Westminster as a sign that Defra is determined to try to improve its patchy image in the countryside.
Colin Breed, a member of the Commons rural affairs committee, welcomed the move but said it was no substitute for a more far-reaching shake-up of the department itself....."

May 27 ~ "Defra complain that farmers haven't signed up to the stock collection scheme but the Department's dithering over its organisation of the scheme is at the root of the problem." Andrew George Liberal Democrat shadow rural affairs secretary.

The Newcastle Journal reports:
"....Andrew George has written to Secretary of State Margaret Beckett, after reports suggested that only one third of livestock farmers have signed up so far. They only have until May 28 to do so.
"The burial ban is simply unenforceable until the official regulation has been laid before Parliament. And as the stock collection scheme will not be ready until August at the earliest the Government cannot expect farmers to foot the bill for delays which could have been avoided by Defra.
"Some farmers have told me that they have received two letters from Defra, while others have been asked to join despite giving up livestock farming or retiring altogether.
"The subscription deadline must be put back to at least July, giving the Department time to sort itself out, check that its benchmark is the right one and consult the industry."
We do not yet know for certain what causes BSE or how it may or may not affect human beings. Lack of funding for independent research means that much legislation such as the banning of on-farm burial, which is highly damaging to small farmers, is not necessarily based on sound science.