Originally from: Val Collinson
                        
Andrew

 You say that in the not so distant past, farmers had a lot of influence. I think that the simple reason for this was that many politicians were also farmers! Maybe 'digging for Britain' also had a little to do with it at one time.

WRT vaccination, it was not only the NFU who were against it – Peter Jinman is our vet – a highly intelligent and well informed man, and very involved in the FMD outbreak and frustrated by the inpenetrable bureacracy we all had to deal with. If I understood him correctly, he reckoned that the vaccine then available was not sufficiently reliable, particularly in sheep, in which the uptake was apparently poor, to be safely used and that it was not possible to police 'ring vaccination' areas sufficiently to prevent unauthorised movements and therefore identification of the disease per se would have become impossible. So it was not just the NFU. Furthermore, as a dairy farmer in an infected area I would vehemently have resisted vaccination, because, apart from the fact that I did not trust the govt not to slaughter my stock at some future time, simply because they had been vaccinated, but also because we, in the infected area were treated like lepers by those in West Wales who were free of the disease and I am perfectly certain that vaccinated stock would similarly have been spurned – both by farmers and also maybe by consumers. I am convinced that the only way to use vaccination would be to vaccinate every susceptible animal in the country!

The minority interests who get listened to are largely those with nothing better to do than concentrate on the single issue onto which they have latched and make a huge amount of noise about it. This is quite alien to the British farming psyche. Also, British farmers are innately suspicious of eachother and this is why farming co-operatives have almost without exception, ended in failure.. Also, farmers closely involved in the FMD epidemic were far too busy battoning down the hatches and living from day to day, trying to keep their stock isolated and, worse, dealing with the dreadful mindless bureaucracy, to consider political activism!

I fear that it is indeed inevitable that the British farmer 'will remain isolated and vulnerable' – in perpetuity – it is inherent in their nature!

Regards

Val