Yesterday’s headlines proclaimed “End in sight for foot and mouth crisis” but this morning the BBC reports “New ‘foot-and-mouth’ cases probed.” One of the two new locations includes the Chessington World of Adventures & Zoo.
There’s still no definitive answer to the question of where the foot and mouth virus originated from. Prime suspects are the British government’s Institute for Animal Health (IAH) or the US-owned commercial laboratory, Merial. Both labs are situated close to each other in Pirbright, Surrey, which is close to where the present outbreak started. Both labs research the foot and mouth disease and have the virus as well as produce vaccines for it. One IAH employee has contracted Legionnaires disease and the lab is a possible source of contamination.
The Grumpy Vegan commented earlier that there might be a more enlightened approach to managing the disease with the new minister at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Hilary Benn. Clearly, DEFRA has improved its crisis management of the present outbreak. But the questions are unanswered on the use of vaccines to prevent the disease as a matter of policy and the present outbreak’s source.
Two important aspects to this outbreak were the focus of two excellent columns in The Guardian. First, Max Hastings wrote
Whatever the explanation of the Surrey foot and mouth outbreak, it appears plain that someone at the Pirbright laboratory complex was negligent. Virus cultures are, in effect, biological weapons, and require handling accordingly. In this case, something went badly wrong.
It does not seem vindictive to suggest that when all the facts are in, if it proves possible to attribute responsibility to individuals, they should be sacked. The outbreak has cost tens of millions of pounds, caused massive disruption and put the fear of God into the rural community. If accountability means anything, somebody should pay the price.
Peter Wilby discussed the media’s focus on the outbreak.
I’ve always been amazed by how the press gets so excited about foot and mouth disease. Farming accounts for 1% of the economy and barely 2% of the workforce. Genuine farmers – family-run businesses that could truly face ruin – are far outnumbered by agri-conglomerates and TV producers tending to a few sheep at weekends. An MP for one of the most rural constituencies in southern England once told me he’d never actually met any farmers, and I doubt most news editors have either.
The papers scream about a “deadly virus” on the loose, but it isn’t even that. Foot and mouth rarely kills animals and only one human in Britain has ever contracted the disease. It is essentially an economic sickness, because it affects animals’ weight and milk yield and, as the Daily Telegraph put it, a cow’s value is “permanently reduced”.
All the same, we aren’t going to starve from lack of meat – the health pages are always telling us to cut down on it – and an advanced economy like ours ought to be able to take the disease in its stride.
Additional developments about the disease are now relegated to the inside pages. Meanwhile, animals die, some people make a profit and who is accountable?
