After Foot and Mouth – 2002
I was recently clearing up some papers when I came across a piece I wrote on the outbreak of Foot and Mouth in Britain, and its aftermath, dated 20th April 2002.
It made very sad reading.
“Currently,” I wrote, “ we are trying to ‘encourage’ Mrs Beckett to tell us WHEN she is going to allow markets to open to breeding sheep again.”
It will not surprise today’s small shepherds to know that there was never any reply.
“Meanwhile”, I went on “many of us have fields so grazed down, that they look more like billiard tables than fields. As for the sheep, well, in spite of our best efforts with hay and so on, the flocks are HUNGRY and there is nothing we can do about it until Mrs Beckett deigns to ANSWER US.”
In fact, I spent every penny I had buying all the hay that was available, until that ran out, then I bought alfalfa for horses as a replacement to give them some fodder, along with bags and bags of sheep nuts and feed blocks.
It ruined me, of course, but my flock survived and that March, I had the best lambing I had ever had, brought about by the years of careful breeding for the easiest birthings, the most multiple births, the best hoggett lamb meat possible and wool like silk.
The barn was humming as beautiful twins and triplets popped out, without any help from me, totally oblivious to the evil machinations of “Man”, as we set up electric fence lines to keep out the foxes (with hunting banned) which made nests in the grass all around the barn yard, no doubt waiting for the moment when we would leave and thus open their larder. They got no joy, I might say.
And still there was no market.
Because Margaret Beckett never did reply, but, like Nick Brown who had orchestrated the whole original horrible mess by trying to act like a bureaucrat instead of a government minister, was eventually promoted upwards to a even better paid job in government, which to our shame, is still “in power” today.
We now know that millions of Britain’s farm animals perished unnecessarily in that terrible holocaust, brought about through no fault of any farmer or smallholder.
Today, in the wake of the latest outbreak, caused by the laxness and irresponsibility of the same government failing to keep its animal testing laboratories at Pirbright in good or even adequate working order, that same government is now trying to place the financial responsibility for any further outbreaks, on the farmer and smallholder.
“Nil desperandum”, they say. Indeed, it is hard not to despair.
Here is one more reason why it is time we governed ourselves.
Tess Nash
Chairman – St Ives and the Isles of Scilly
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