Originally from: chris stockdale
                        
Dear Burkie,

I received about £50,000 in total for slaughtered stock, including a sum for small amounts of destroyed feed, straw, old wooden sheds, firewood, fertiliser, damaged or destroyed equipment and to make good damage myself. I do not have the exact figure to hand nor do I wish to quote it as some parts are ongoing; the sum would have been considerably larger had I not successfully kept some outlying stock alive, as, being the youngest and of breeding age, they were classed as the most valuable. I would also have increased the sum had I worked on the clean -up either at home, elsewhere, or both.

I do not know how much the Valuer received, or the slaughter-crew or marksman, nor how to attribute costs for the Ministry vets ot Army assistants.

Most of the people owed money are the individuals or firms who jumped in to capitalise on the clean-up. Without wishing to cast aspersions, some of these were not frightfully nice people, and quite how they could have become owed so much in such a short time unless they were milking the tax-payer for all they could, beats me- sob stories such as ' I am still owed £12,000,000 for my last months work' do not receive universal sympathy.

I have a record of payments. None is outstanding, the cheque came from the Bank of England as I recall, certainly nothing EU or strange in any way.

I do not know what the costs of the clean-up were, we had an economy-minded supervisor as she was an AI inseminator working for her normal pay (about £6/hour at a guess)and it pissed her off to see the tax-payers money wasted, so not a lot of luxuries here. I suspect some of the labour -force dragged the job out because they liked working here (I took that as a compliment).

The EU is going to pay a sum, I believe about about 40% but it could be higher, towards UK costs. The remainder is for ther UK to find.

Am I part of DEFRA? Am I heck! No, the work I am doing with DEFRA is completely voluntary and unpaid; the Organisation (Charity) which I represent pays my travel costs to London and that is it, the rest comes out of my own increasingly threadbare pocket . Furthermore, the new head of this 'Communications Group' sees our role as being completed by Christmas. Hence the pressure now – if I am going to report to the Organic sector and the national farming Press that we have a credible and viable vaccination policy in place, I want to be sure that this is correct because I neither want to report an untruth nor lend weight to an ill-thought out and therefore potentially dangerous policy. I am presently compiling the list of required or essential criteria – will mail it when complete for comment.

Please tell me Burkie, or anyone else who knows – I only got a computer in the autumn of 2001; how many websites/ smart group on FMD are there, and am I missing them? I only read warmwell, and the Farmtalking group; please let me know if other groups are still active, because I would like to read their output and input myself. Goodness knows, there are few enough of us left still at this, it needs all of our input to get anywhere.

I suspect what made Pirbright the laughing stock is political interference; I agree that they were slow off the mark at the abbattoir. I think most of the blame for the rest actually falls to the Chief Veterinary Officer and the State Veterinary Service, (themselves struggling under continual cuts in funding, permanently understaffed , undervalued and underappreciated), rather than Pirbright – you know, the usual agricultural situation now arising as consumers take their varied and luxurious food supply pretty much for granted. As Paul Kitching said, if they (the Government) had retained confidence in their vets, allowed the Movement restrictions to take effect and disease show where present, conventional techniques would have achieved the same end with a lot less bloodshed. The massively ott slaughter arose from the Contiguous and 3k culls, inspired by Tony's fear that agriculture was going to cost him the Election – his Holy Grail, the Second Term, the one where it would all come right after the Financial strictures of the first term – and listened to the advice of Anderson and his Modelling crew. Porton Down are nothing to do with it.

 Regards, Chris.