Lessons That Come Too Late For Victims

Originally from: Natalie
                        
This is the editorial from WMN about the report commissioned by the Government to study the scientific implications of last year's FMD crisis.

On their web site it states that this is from the North Devon Journal but it is in the WMN also on page 12 under the heading VOICE OF THE WESTCOUNTRY.

Regards,
NATALIE.

The unmistakable sound of stable doors being slammed shut behind long-departed horses will be reverberating through Whitehall and Westminster over the next few days. Belatedly, measures to reduce the risk of another foot and mouth outbreak and to restrict the spread of any further cases that do occur, look set to be put in place.

They won't help the hundreds of Westcountry farmers who lost their stock, their livelihoods and in many cases their whole way of life during the outbreak that devastated the rural Westcountry last year. But they should prevent a repeat of that disaster, which ripped through so much of the countryside, destroying not just farms but tourist businesses and other rural concerns in its wake.

The most recent recommendations on how to prevent a further foot and mouth catastrophe are contained in the Royal Society's scientific report on the disease. Further recommendations are expected in the report from Professor Iain Anderson, which is due out next week.

But the real tragedy is that so much of what is recommended ought to be have been in place before the 2001 outbreak – and could so easily have been introduced if the potential risks of a foot and mouth epidemic had been properly understood and acted upon.

We have already heard how ministers were warned about the dangers of foot and mouth through illegal imports of meat from countries where the disease is rife. Those warnings were largely ignored.

It often takes a disaster to bring about change for the better. But it shouldn't have to be like that. It's nothing less than appalling to sacrifice the livelihoods of thousands of farmers, slaughter millions of animals and seriously compromise the economic stability of rural areas because sensible precautions to prevent outbreaks of a major but preventable animal disease have not been put in place. Yet that's what happened.

Even now, 18 months after the first cases of foot and mouth disease were recorded at the start of the most recent outbreak, suspect meat illegally imported from China remains on sale in at least one Westcountry shop. The WMN knows that to be true. We bought some.

And at Heathrow Airport, Britain's biggest entry point for people and goods from all over the world, the WMN has found that security staff are struggling to keep up with the vast array of illegally imported meat and meat products that pose a threat to animal and even human health. Belatedly, money has been set aside to bolster measures to keep out the suspect meat. Around £30 million is understood to have been included as part of Gordon Brown's spending spree earlier this week to help strengthen the line against illegal imports.

The Royal Society, rightly, set great store by the need to keep foot and mouth disease out of Britain. And if it should break through our defences, it believes vaccination – and not the controversial contiguous cull – should be used to keep healthy animals disease free. Its recommendations make a great deal of sense. The most brutal aspect of the entire fight against foot and mouth last year was the slaughter of thousands of perfectly healthy animals as a firebreak to halt the disease in its tracks.

As a method of virus control it owed more to medieval times than the 21st century. It caused misery across much of the agricultural community for very little positive benefit. It must not be allowed to remain a part of the battle plan if ever foot and mouth should return.

Yesterday's Royal Society report drives home that point. It accepts that slaughter will still have to be used to take out diseased animals and bring an epidemic under control. But it advocates a "vaccinate to live" policy for those animals which could catch the disease but which have not already succumbed. That would mean vaccinated animals could be slaughtered at the proper time and their meat could go into the food chain, saving millions of pounds of good food from being wasted.

It will all come far too late for last year's victims of, many of whom stood by helplessly as their healthy stock was slaughtered in the name of a discredited contiguous cull which appeared to owe more to the Government's election plans than to animal health. The only good things that can come out of a disaster like this are lessons for the future. They must be learned – and learned well.