Jiglu: Farmtalking: Discussion: Fw: warmwell

Originally from: coleen

Hi Everyone

Mary has asked me to tell everyone do not panic if Warmwell is not updated at it's usual break neck speed. Mary has had to go over to a lap tap due to technical problems – but please rest assured both Mary and Warmwell are still busy working away.

You can still send to Warmwell and receive all the information as per usual.

Duncan was standing reading the Farmers Guardian in the supermarket and there for all to read was the mention of Warmwell. It has become a well trusted establishement.

Coleen

Originally from: Duncan

Has anyone else noticed that 'warmwell' is to stay for the time being.

Oh how I wish there was someone out there who would fund Mary, so we could keep this wonderful site going.

Please people if you have not read the article from Country life concerning 'warmwell' then please do.

http://www.warmwell.com/ Look out for the compost Police is the title of the page. Just click on the Country Life Link.

Perhaps there really is a Santa out there after all.

Coleen

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.

Originally from: Joyce

Mary,

I'll say it publicly! I read it every day when I'm at home, sometimes more than once – and whenever I can cadge a computer when I'm not....
I always use it as a reference when I need to blast Defra, NFU and others!!!

Joyce

Originally from: Mary Critchley

Thank you Joyce, and I have had encouragement from others today too. I think the detail in the NAO report is very well worth reading. However, some newspapers – journalists who are lazy, or worse – are using the summary to give the impression yet again that it was somehow the farmers' fault that the EU refused to recompense the £600 million.

Oh for some decent journalist to point out that over-payment was not asked for by farmers but was designed to buy the acquiesance of reluctant and hard-up farmers And then, do you remember how the "millionaire farmers" story was passed to the Sunday Times by Number 10?

Remember too how those poor Welsh farmers in the Brecon Beacons were made to feel that it was a chance they simply had to take – even at the cost of the hefted flocks? Even so, many scorned it and still protested. Janet Hughes did her very best.

Those many, many farmers who were put on restrictions and had to watch their stock starving or lambing in liquid mud seem to have been forgotten. No compensation there. The whole episode still makes me feel desperately sad. That is what drives me to continue warmwell. It is nice to know that some are still aware of how sanitised the history of it all is becoming. The truth – as you and I know – was grotesque. I'll try to keep the website going for a bit longer.

Mary x

http://www.warmwell.com

Originally from: coleen

Hi Joyce

Yes, and I like you, point others to it..

Coleen

Originally from: mark purdey

Dear Mary,

Do not become too despondent. I know exactly how you must be feeling when you put so much high quality, relevant material out into this mad, mad world, and sometimes feel that you are being sucked completely dry into a vacuum. You get so little back when you are fighting this kind of game.

I can recieve hoax or junk email for days on end ( which can embroil you in hours of writing advice or recommendations for no real reason ). But then one day, some positive feed back comes ( like from your good self !! ) and it makes it all worth it.

But i would bet that our opponents in DEFRA et al are reading Warmwell like beavers, for they hate bad publicity ( even though they would never , ever admit to it ) . And in reading your site, they are being educated in what the majority of the non government population are thinking about them. Your work may therefore be penetrating beyond their arrogant facade, and getting some important info across. And then there are the students who will be using your material as a resource pool, and will therefore be acquiring a more balanced picture of what is really going on in Agriculture, rather than just the one track spin line of DEFRA et al.

This perspective of the service that you are providing free of charge is enormously important for the future of democracy many reasons. Your work has to be having a very positive impact I feel, because it is preaching to the non converted which is exactly what we should be doing. And your material is presented articulately, in a very objective manner, and is factually correct, which means that they cannot write you and your writing off as emotive crankcase material . It simply sits there on the internet as a historical testimony of the injustices of what has happened at the hands of so many misguided ministers and civil servants who would appear to have been working to deliberately collapse sustainable agricultural systems worldwide to make way for the US supermarket / multinational globalist monsters who are sowing the seeds for a catastrophic future of potential famines, soil erosion and god knows what.They are so short sighted , and my god the world really needs your material up there on the web.

You really are doing a great job, so just hang on in there. Some days , the number of readers will dwindle to a mere trickle, but other days, when the subject matter hits the news, they will be more than eager for the important alternative perspective that Warmwell presents.

Just yesterday, I had a chat with several local farmers in our kitchen about the extreme changes imposed upon Agriculture in the last few years. Everybody is so despondent, even the formerly optimistic types are downbeat about the future. The conclusion of our informal debate was that the current government has deliberately betrayed the people of this country in order to promote a future for corporation farms / US supermarket consortiums. etc ( eg the companies that paid for Nouveau Labours election campaign ). People were mainly incensed over the new legislation that prevents you from doing virtually anything on your farm and how this was being administered in such a way as to drive the hard working family farmers into collapse. But what these ignorant idiots fail to realise, is that once you have lost that intuitive wisdom and earthly skills from the land, it is gone for ever. And then when the oil starts to run dry and we can no longer import our food from Eastern Europe or Africa, it will be too late. We will have no soil fertility left in Englands green and pleasant lands ( because all of the humus producing livestock would have been slaughtered ) plus no real agricultural wisdom left to operate our redundant, impoverished farms.

Thus we really need websites like Warmwell out there. Perhaps it will inspire the next generation to fling bitches like Margaret Beckett into Goal for gross negligence
( but they will be long gone by then ), once they start to experience the severity of the repercussions resulting from how this government bullied their farming community into bankruptcy.

Fight on Folks, It is enormously important that we succeed in this war, not so much
for ourselves, but for the next generation

Mark Purdey
In a message dated 02/02/05 14:41:32 GMT Standard Time, ... writes:

...

Originally from: Farmtalking

Hi Mary!

I know just how you feel!

However, as you know, Farmtalking has promoted Warmwell since it's launch and I usually check it daily myself!

I notice you don't have a hit-counter and neither does Farmtalking but I do have access to statistics, so I know that Farmtalking still receives between 5 and 6,000 thouand 'hits' every month and they come from all over the world and include Governments!

I still get calls and e-mails requesting further info about this and that and often refer enquirers to Warmwell and the search facility on both our sites too, if I can't at that moment give them a direct url reference on either. In fact I often have to search them myself as my memory 'aint what it used to be!

I imagine that Warmwell gets quite as many visitors as Farmtalking, if not more, as the 'News' info you produce covers other subjects of great importance other than FMD and Agriculture in the UK.

It is very rewarding when one receives acknowledgement or thanks however infrequently, but rest assured that your efforts are much appreciated by many who rarely realise how costly they may be to you!

Please keep Warmwell going if you possibly can but at the same time take care of yourself!

I know the temptation and wish that we could do more is great, but we can only do our best within our own capabilities and financial resources which are frequently stretched to the limit!

Take care and lots of love – Jane

Author wrote:
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.

Originally from: Bill

Maintaining a website is a time-consuming, expensive, and mostly thankless task.

Please keep up the good work Mary at Warmwell and Jane at Farmtalking.

Many, many, thanks to both of you.

All the best,
Bill.

Originally from: Peter Greenhill

I still believe that those who made use of the warmwell fund of useful information could afford to pay for an annual subscription and maybe a specialist fee for individual searches. It is important that no job becomes so onerous that the health of the individual is harmed: that is pointless. If, on the other hand, compensation from those who subscribe makes life easier for mary, then we should see if this is the help that she needs. I know I have said this before but I do think it worth considering.

Peter

Originally from: Pat Gardiner

Author wrote:
Maintaining a website is a time-consuming, expensive, and mostly thankless
task.
Please keep up the good work Mary at Warmwell and Jane at Farmtalking.
Many, many, thanks to both of you.
All the best,
Bill.

It is all very well to give Mary justified praise and encouragement

When this is all over, and it will be, it is up to all of us to make quite that Mary gets her recognition.

All the timeservers and lowlife will rush to claim credit for exposing one of the world's greatest scandals.

I'm owed nothing, got into this by mistake and, if I could live my life again, would hide in the nearest town.

Mary is a volunteer, totally driven by concepts of decency, and I can't think of anyone better to make sure that it never happens again.

Regards
Pat Gardiner
www.go-self-sufficient.com

Originally from: Peter Greenhill

Sue,

On the basis that you and I are not seized with this idea in isolation, it must be up to Mary to consider if this is a sensible way forward. Money, for all of us is the grease for living but if the effort to achieve the goal is too much, no amount of money will help. I also suggest that IF this is agreed, the best method of payment is a standing order for a monthly amount to make up an annual figure.

Peter

Originally from: Sue Burton

Hi Peter,

I second that. We cant help time wise – but would certainly be more than happy to make a monthly / annual subscription for access to the font of knowledge that is warmwell – that holds us all together and supplies us all with so much information and archive material that we all rely on and use so regularly

Sue

Originally from: Pat Gardiner

Author wrote:
Sue,
On the basis that you and I are not seized with this idea in
isolation, it must be up to Mary to consider if this is a sensible way
forward. Money, for all of us is the grease for living but if the effort to
achieve the goal is too much, no amount of money will help. I also suggest
that IF this is agreed, the best method of payment is a standing order for a
monthly amount to make up an annual figure.
Peter
----- Original Message -----
From: <...>
To: <...>
Sent: Sunday, February 06, 2005 4:11 AM
Subject: Re: [farmtalking] RE: warmwell
Hi Peter,
I second that. We cant help time wise – but would certainly be more than
happy to make a monthly / annual subscription for access to the font of
knowledge
that is warmwell – that holds us all together and supplies us all with so
much
information and archive material that we all rely on and use so regularly
Sue

Many I respectfully suggest that this might be counterproductive. Mary opened this thread by asking whether anyone was reading Warmwell. We all told her that we were.

A subscription only service would set the Champagne corks popping in Maff-Defra and the RCVS. Any form of subscription would reduce the readers by an enormous percentage. Very soon the only readers would be the veterinary Establishment and those who want the facts hidden and only available to approved insiders.

Sound familiar?

It is also a variation of "promote the shopsteward to foreman."

The strain of keeping Warmwell open, available, visibly independant and updated is great, I'm sure, but I genuinely think the end is now in sight.

Regards
Pat Gardiner

Originally from: Sue Burton

Hi Pat,

Of course you are right – if people HAD to pay to read warmwell it would reduce the readership immediately – what I was suggesting was that those of us who who believe warmwell and Mary need our support are happy to make some sort of regular donation to help with the costs of keeping it there so that it can provide so much information for so many people. I was certainly not suggesting a charge to access the information .

Sue