A Dangerous Dither
by Jonathan Dimbleby, Soil Association president

A version of this article appeared in the Daily Mail, 6 April 2001.

At the moment, it matters not a jot whether Tony Blair takes his holiday in Tuscany or Cumbria or, for that matter, in Kosovo. Nor does it matter whether the Number 10 rapped the knuckles of the footloose environment minister, Michael Meacher, for jumping the gun by decreeing a public inquiry into the origins of the foot and mouth catastrophe. For farmers and everyone else whose livelihoods are now on the line as a result of this scourge, the only issue that matters is whether the policy of mass slaughter is right or wrong.

As a journalist who is also a farmer, I am baffled by those who put their faith in funeral pyres. I am also appalled by the methods used by advocates of this macabre rite of animal passage to denigrate the alternative: a carefully targeted programme of mass vaccination. As president of the Soil Association (which leads the organic movement) I am familiar with the efforts of adversaries to vilify our stance on pesticides, chemicals, antibiotics and GM foods. But the anti-vaccination brigade is in a different league of obfuscation and distortion.

From the start, the Soil Association had qualms about the slaughter policy. When it became obvious that the disease was out of control, we went public with a strategy which offered the nation the only available prospect of an early reprieve from the mass carnage that had become a nightly horror show with a worldwide audience.

For over three weeks now we have urged that an emergency programme of vaccination should be introduced alongside the slaughter policy both to damp down the disease within hotspots like Cumbria and Devon and to form a "firebreak" around those areas across the country where there is any significant cluster of cases. Our reasoning is simple but sound: the scientific evidence culled from the most eminent sources around the world is compelling. Vaccination works.

Ministers, up to and including the prime minister, have listened to our case with evident understanding and apparent approval but - so far - nothing has changed. Six weeks after the outbreak was first detected, vaccination, in the words of the agriculture minister, Nick Brown, remains a "last resort".

In the meantime, the "first" resort has entailed the massacre of more than one million cattle, sheep and pigs. Almost all of these - 95 per cent - were healthy animals which had the misfortune to be within the danger zone around an infected holding. On the present course, another million are likely to face the same fate. A further one and a half million are to be slaughtered in the "welfare" cull of flocks and herds which are suffering because the restriction on livestock movements in infected zones means they can't be given adequate food or care.

The ballooning cost of compensation to farmers alone is expected to drain the Treasury of a billion pounds. While most of the countryside remains firmly "closed for business", the financial loss to allied enterprises in the rural economy and to the tourist trade is already a calamity. No one knows how long it will be before the disease is eliminated or what the eventual cost will be. The Treasury talks about £3 billion - equivalent to a penny on income tax. Others foresee losses to the economy of up £9 billion. Some economists predict a fall of more than half a per cent in Britain's growth rate this year.

That is the price of putting in place a scorched earth policy to re-establish an export industry in live animals that is itself built around a crazy system of Common Agricultural Policy subsidies that indirectly sustain agribusiness attitudes which turn sheep into commodities and dealers into brokers - shovelling the wretched creatures around the country from one market to another before shipping them across the channel to be slaughtered in Normandy and sold in Paris supermarkets as French lamb.

But vaccination is not only a "last resort": it is vigorously opposed. The Ministry of Agriculture and the National Farmers Union have formed an unholy alliance which appears to have secured an arm lock on government policy. Yet they have only achieved this pyrrhic victory by arming themselves with a quiver-full of myths in which they may sincerely believe but which fly in the face of the scientific evidence.

Among the most damaging of these myths are the claims that (1) the vaccination is ineffective, (2) vaccinated animals would have to be slaughtered in any case (3) milk and meat from vaccinated animals could not be sold for human consumption and (4) vaccination would unnecessarily postpone the date at which Britain would regain its "disease free" status - without which no animals or meat exports could leave these shores. As even a cursory reading of the available evidence from Europe and the US Department of Agriculture shows quite clearly, all these claims are either false or thoroughly misleading.

The research shows that vaccination gives 100% protection to healthy animals - and even if an animal already incubating the disease was to become a "carrier" after vaccination, it would be extremely unlikely to transmit the infection to others in the herd; in any case, the virus would rapidly die out for lack of "hosts" in which to take up residence. Nor is there any regulation either in the UK or in the EU which requires the slaughter of vaccinated animals. And so far from being any threat to human health, you can consume milk and meat from vaccinated cows, sheep and pigs without any risk - the great majority of animals entering the food chain are already vaccinated against a range of endemic diseases that afflict British livestock. As to our "disease-free" status, the international regulations are unambiguous: we would be able to re-establish these coveted rights after twelve months from the date on which the last animal is either slaughtered or vaccinated - whichever date is later. Legally there is nothing to choose between either approach.

So if the case against vaccination collapses under even the mildest interrogation what stands in its way? It is not as though the farming community has much confidence in the slaughter policy. Most farmers I know are convinced that foot and mouth has already spread far beyond the "hotspots" and that the pyres will never catch it up. Nor do they have much faith in the Ministry of Agriculture which they tend to believe is led by pen-pushing rejects from other parts of Whitehall and scientists who are only inside the ministry because they couldn't get a decent job outside. In my part of the world, a lot of farmers are also infuriated by the metropolitan assumption that the NFU always speaks on their behalf - even when, as in this case, its principle motive appears to be to ensure that the government showers its stricken members with financial compensation on an unprecedented scale and never turns off the tap.

Given half a chance and a fair analysis of the facts, farmers who really care about the future would leap at vaccination. As they are quite capable of inoculating their own animals, the programme could be underway within days. Very soon after that most of the funeral pyres could be extinguished; the bulldozers could be removed from the burial grounds; the Army could return to barracks; and the countryside could at last be genuinely re-opened for business and pleasure.

When this is over there must be a great reckoning and radical reform. For the moment the message is simple: stop vacillating and start vaccinating.

Courtesy Jonathan Dimbleby, May 6th 2001 Soil Association