Originally from: Mary Critchley
                        
Is anyone here still reading warmwell? As many know, I have been updating it daily since the outbreak in 2001 – at really quite considerable expense in terms of time, money and health. Replies would help me to make a decision about whether it is of value to anyone other than myself and the few journalists who pick its brains (with no acknowledgement) from time to time.
Anyone kind enough to reply might do so to ... rather than publicly. I'd be very grateful.

Mary

Here, for example – is today's warmwell on the NAO report etc

http://www.warmwell.com
2 February 2005 ~ "When we criticised Defra for paying too much, we didn't mean it to stop paying any of its remaining contractors.."
 NAO Chairman's Statement ".. I am alarmed that the Department has been dragging its heels in setting up a scheme to share future costs with industry. Defra has also been dreadfully slow in paying all its bills. Four years after the outbreak, Defra is yet to begin its planned review of some of its contractors' costs, and £40 million of invoices remain unpaid. When we criticised Defra for paying too much, we didn't mean it to stop paying any of its remaining contractors.
 And the introduction of an IT system to help control future outbreaks has been delayed. This is not an area where we can afford such a lackadaisical approach. Being better prepared will also help avoid the need for the mass funeral pyres which provided enduring and unsettling images of the 2001 outbreak. "
 See warmwell page on the FPB campaign
2 February 2005 ~ Today's National Audit Office report erroneously suggests that contiguous premises will be slaughtered if a new outbreak got "out of control". How can they have got it so wrong?
 The NAO report suggests that if the veterinary and epidemiological evidence directs contiguous slaughter OR if "efforts to control the outbreak are ineffective" then mass slaughter will happen again. This is wrong. There is no "OR" about it.
 Even if the disease were to get out of control, veterinary and epidemiological appraisals WILL take place.
 Further, the report suggests that vaccination is still surrounded by uncertainties – "the decision to vaccinate would have to be taken in the face of many uncertainties".
 This website is close to despair. How can things be so wrongly suggested to the press?
 a.. The Food Standards Agency has asserted that the products of vaccinated animals have no health implications for humans.
 b.. Food retailers have confirmed that they would not be seeking to differentiate between meat and milk from vaccinated and unvaccinated animals.
 c.. Internationally recognised laboratory tests able to differentiate animals that have been vaccinated from those that have been exposed to the virus. Such tests are available commercially. All that is needed is the political will to declare them "validated" – a woolly term at best. So many of what were uncertainties are resolved. Only Sir David King has put the cat among the pigeons by his curiously uninformed assertions (see below)
 The decision not to vaccinate has been laid at the feet of farmers – as in the NAO report – but in the 2001 outbreak the NFU assertion that farmers opposed vaccination was contradicted by many farmers themselves. In April 2001, a survey taken by MP David Maclean in his affected constituency of Cumbria showed 140 commercial farmers wanted vaccination against 19 that did not. "Commercial producers for – particularly those closest to approaching F&M"
2 February 2005 ~ Today's NAO report looks at the progress made by the Government in implementing changes recommended following the 2001 epidemic.
 Interesting to see how media have interpreted NAO press release How many will have looked at the report itself (pdf file here, opens in new window)
 Guardian
 " Britain is still not prepared for any new foot and mouth epidemic, four years after the disaster that led to a cull of 6million animals and postponement of the last general election, the National Audit Office reveals today. While auditors agree that progress has been made to reduce the chances of a repeat disaster, a promised new government computer system to tackle exotic diseases is not in place, and even more illegal meat fed to animals – said to have been the reason for the outbreak – is being smuggled into the country.
 ...... The report says the ministry now has one of the best contingency plans for dealing with foot and mouth, but fears it will not work smoothly because co-ordination between Whitehall and local government and farmers has not been properly organised. It warns that the dispute which bedevilled the last outbreak, whether to vaccinate or cull animals, would arise again because no decision on how to handle this had been made.
 BBC
 Public accounts committee chairman Edward Leigh... said the department was "dragging its heels". .... Defra had been "dreadfully slow" in paying some of its bills dating from the foot and mouth crisis. ...... "Four years after the outbreak, Defra is yet to begin its planned review of some of its contractors' costs, and £40m of invoices remain unpaid," Mr Leigh said.
 Mr Leigh also pointed out that the introduction of an IT system to help control future outbreaks had been delayed. ..... National Audit Office chief Sir John Bourn said ... Defra had paid 97% of the £1.3bn submitted by contractors since 2001, "but has not agreed a final settlement with 57 contractors pending the results of its investigations".
31 January – 6 February 2005 ~ Dutch research shows "severe post-traumatic distress" in half the farmers whose animals were culled.
 An article: "Impact of a foot and mouth disease crisis on post-traumatic stress symptoms in farmers" in The British Journal of Psychiatry (2005)186: 165–166 by a team of Dutch psychiatric researchers has the following abstract:
 "Culling 27 000 farm animals during an epidemic of foot and mouth disease in The Netherlands in 2001 resulted in substantial psychological distress among Dutch farmers. We investigated the association of exposure to this crisis with symptoms of intrusions and avoidance as found in post-traumatic stress disorder. Survey results from the Impact of Event Scale administered to 661 Dutch dairy farmers showed that about half of those whose animals were culled suffered from severe post-traumatic distress; we conclude that such agricultural crises can have a substantial impact on mental health."
 In the Netherlands the number of animals killed was a small fraction of those put to death in the UK. Here, the number of animals killed was between 6 million (government figure) and over 10 million (Meat and Livestock Commission ). Blood tests that were done came back negative in heartbreakingly high numbers, and indeed were often refused. As this email from the 2001 epidemic shows, the distress among the UK rural community was of a kind never before experienced since it was so apparent that there was unforgivable chaos – and that policies were being driven, not by veterinary expertise and under proper supervision as in 1968, but by political expediency.