RE: [eurofaq] EU 'LIFELINE' IGNORED
Originally from: David
Christina,
Please send the next Facts, Figures & Phantasies FREE by e-mail.
The number of animals that lost their lives thro the Governments mishandling of FMD2001 was 10–15 million and I think DEFRA has now admitted it to be the case. Not taken into account in the official figures were the healthy animals slaughtered on neighbouring farms (contiguous policy), animals slaughtered on the Livestock Welfare for Disposal Scheme (LWDS), the young progeny of those slaughtered plus any embryos inside the pregnant animals. (A sow with a litter of 15 piglets counted as ONE).
The other BIG scandle is that we will never know the extent of the "epidemic" (if there was one). Round about April 2001, the Government changed the policy to "slaughter on suspicion" which included the contiguous farms (= x each case by three of four?). At the beginning blood tests were taken to confirm the diagnosis, then it changed to kill and wait for the result of blood tests but so many came back negative that they finally dropped blood testing all together. OK, they were being overwhelmed with blood tests but samples should have been taken for later testing and we would then have KNOWN how much of an epidemic we actually had. In Gloucestershire there were (oficially) 78 cases with something like 78,000 animals (oficially) slaughtered. However, a local vet who helped DEFRA says that there were only SIX definite cases in the County.
David
Originally from: Bill
David, blood tests mostly don't work because whoever devised the tests in the 1950's didn't know the virus spends most of it's lifecycle in the lymphatic system.
MAAF's huge problem was they didn't rely on original research but put their trust in "large numbers of scientific papers on foot and mouth disease". These so called "scientific papers" can all be traced back to the original work by Loeffler and Frosch.
Unfortunately it's like Chinese whispers and a lot of the important stuff gets mislaid or misinterpreted along the way. The public have a misguided view of science and believe research goes on forever but in virology once a virus has been investigated the scientists move on.
Nothing was done in FMD research from the 1900's until the 1960's and 70's when vaccines were developed. The authoritative work on virus lifecycle is still Loeffler and Frosch.
Bill.








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