F&D - UPDATE 8

Dr. Richard North PhD. [UKIP]
Research Department EDD [European Parliament]
19 April 2001
Death warrants galore.

While farmers complain that the mainly urban population has little understanding of farming issues, today's announcement on foot and mouth vaccination by Ben Gill, president of the National Farming Union, demonstrated how out of touch farming representatives are with urban sentiment. 

By blocking the government's plans for vaccination Gill has effectively destroyed any chance of reducing the killing of healthy animals and has ensured that the public revulsion at the wholesale slaughter will continue. 

In so far as foot and mouth has impacted on the urban population, it is through the television images of burning cattle, sheep being buried in vast pits and the never-ending litany of woes from stricken farmers, distraught at losing their stock. 

Yet, what has also impacted on the urban mind - articulated by a succession of newspaper columnists, including Christopher Booker, Janet Daley, Libby Purves, Magnus Linklater and even economist Anatole Kaletsky - is that the one sure way to end the obscenity of the ever-escalating killing is to introduce emergency vaccination. 

Up until now, the government has been seen as the author of the slaughter policy and the MAFF has engendered much hostility for its continued insistence on killing ever-larger numbers of healthy animals. 

But now the farmers - as represented by the NFU - will be seen as the main progenitors of the slaughter and the main obstacle to implementing a more humane policy. Unless the public is sophisticated enough to realise that the NFU does not actually represent the majority of farmers - and that it is itself split right down the middle - sentiment may now change rapidly. From being seen as the "victims" the farmers will be considered responsible for the slaughter, more even than the government, which - after all - has been pushing for vaccination. 

Political enemies 

Politically vaccination is clearly a preferred option. As the date approaches for Tony Blair to decide on a 7 June election, he is confronted with the prospect of the epidemic flaring up again, striking at cattle newly turned out from winter housing into infected fields. 

Against a backdrop of a renewed killing frenzy, as thousands more cattle succumb to the disease, Blair may well be presented with a crisis more severe than the original problem which forced him to abandon his 3 May plans. 

Political pressure might be so great that he could be driven to delay the election again, leaving him the autumn option, with potentially disastrous consequences. 

His obvious insurance against such an eventuality was the selective vaccination of cattle, thereby ensuring that the television screens are not dominated by images of dead cows, just as he comes under renewed pressure to announce an election date. 

If the NFU's, by blocking vaccination, has thwarted Mr Blair's election plans once again, it will have created a powerful political enemy. Indifference was one thing, but to have the farming industry as an active object of hostility is quite another. With such limited electoral power, the farming community may suffer grievously for Gill's intransigence after the next election - whenever it may be. 

"Greedy" farmers 

Worse still, if the real reasons for the reluctance of the NFU to accept vaccination become widely known, there will be a massive backlash. While it professes concern about the technical issues, the case made by NFU officials is weak and without justification. 

The real sticking point, on the one hand, the financial implications of extending the export ban and, on the other, the fact that vaccination involves significant a financial penalty. With the generous compensation being paid, farmers are much better off having their animals killed than they are keeping them alive. 

It is entirely understandable that individual should weigh up the financial pros and cons of vaccination, but many of those who have done so, and concluded that they would be financially disadvantaged by vaccination, still want to keep their stock. The point is that they are not being given the choice. Despite representing less than 40 percent of all farmers, the NFU has spoken for them 

Worse still, at least half of the key "power brokers" in the NFU represent arable interests. A significant minority also represent eastern England intensive livestock producers who have nothing to gain from vaccination, and much to lose - particularly in terms of export status. Arable interests and self-interested intensive producers are, in effect, deciding the fate of small and medium livestock farmers in Cumbria and Devon, the tourism sectors and a multiplicity of other trades. 

Export potential 

This situation is made even worse by the increasing understanding of the export situation, where it has now become clear that there are no fixed criteria by which the EU is bound when considering restoring Britain's export status. 

The MAFF response to the NFU's questioning indicates that the EU is likely to be "risk averse". It will probably require extensive blood testing of stock, and substantial evidence of freedom of infection, before giving the all-clear. 

Because of the scale and longevity of the outbreak, and its extensive spread in the sheep population, even conservative estimates indicate that it may be two or three years before the incidence of anti-body positive animals in the sheep population has reduced to a sufficiently low level for export status to be restored. 

In the interim, even with no overt disease being declared, Britain will almost certainly be excluded from export markets - a period of time which will extend farm beyond the technical limits imposed because of the use of vaccination. In other words, the denial of vaccination will prove to have no effect whatsoever on the speed with which export status is restored. 

Political back-lash 

While the current administration will be able to hold the NFU to ransom on this issue - and it has shown itself quite willing to denigrate the farming community - there may well also be considerable political backlash, not least for the failure of the government to seek from the EU permission to compensate farmers for the relatively small losses incurred as a result of vaccination. 

Informed commentators will be asking why the government has been willing to accept the massive costs of the slaughter programme - compensation for which is authorised by the EU - yet has not been prepared to expend the political capital necessary to seek authorisation for the lower costs involved in vaccination, at present illegal under EU law. 

Given the collateral losses to tourism and rural businesses, the government may well be seen as lacking in decisiveness - preferring vacillation to vaccination - but, even more damagingly, lacking the political courage and determination to resolve the issue. 

Conclusion 

As the situation thus deteriorates further, Mr Gill may well find he has signed the death warrant of the farming industry, recklessly ignoring public sentiment and positioning farmers as authors of their own misfortunes. At the same time, he may well have created powerful political enemies, who have long memories and the power to exact revenge. 

For the Blair administration, its failure to act decisively may weaken it electorally and it may have caused itself unnecessary and serious damage by its unwillingness to confront the EU issue, and obtain permission to compensate farmers who vaccinate. It too may have signed its death warrant. 

However, the Conservatives are unlikely to benefit from the fall-out. Too often they have been derivative - demanding more of the same, or faster - while being weak and indecisive on the vaccination issue. 

At risk also is the government's chief scientific advisor, Prof David King. Too many people know that that the outbreak data upon which he relies are so fundamentally flawed that his projections cannot be scientifically sustainable. He is looking more and more each day like a politician, a dangerous stance for a true scientist when the political flack starts flying. 

Rarely has there been such a situation where, it seems, everyone is the loser. Reputations, careers, and even political aspirations are on the line. Few are going to survive intact while, in the meantime, many more animals are going to die needlessly. 

ends 

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