Foot and mouth disease

"it never rains, but it pours" and its been p***ing down for the last two years here, a lot of little farms are going or gone from the wieght and strain of it all, and Our Tony wants an election, shows the interest he has in it doesnt it.

Alan.

My heart goes out to you, Northerner, and all the other farmers who are caught up in this horror. I'm across the sea, but coming from a farming family, I know how hard it can be, even without foot+mouth, BSE etc, to keep a farm going these days. And always there's the politics. (NOTE: Tony Blair is NOT Danger Mouse, though he looks and acts like it sometimes!)

I read now that the Dutch will be using the vaccine in the vicinity of their foot+mouth outbreak, and why shouldn't they - their disease-free status is already down the drain. Unfortunately, the British have a vested (political) interest in culling as the only solution. Just as the US has a vested (political) interest in culling the Vermont sheep, which BTW have tested, albeit under questionable protocol, positive for some sort of TSE. It could just be scrapie, which is endemic here, but the fact that they were imported from the EU is enough to make the politicos quake for fear of bad publicity. I'd put money on the results in Iowa coming back negative eventually.

No our Tony Blair is not to be blamed for the foot and mouth, but you really would think he and his party started it, not the farmers, we had F and M before the animals get over it, please do not mix it up to BSE which gives humans cCJD and our last government kept saying no our meat is safe, i am telling you all there is going to be loads of cases of vCJD in the future. They have arrested some people here in NW England cos they were putting dog food through the human food chain, and nobody knows how long this has gone on for, thank God i am a vegetarian.

OH I wish I'd found this earlier. Well done Diane, I don't think I could have found the time to post on two forums about this.

Just as a quick update, foot and mouth is still about and we are now told under control. As an ex farm worker I'm appalled by the whole handling of what has turned out to be an utter fiasco when it needn't have been. May bank holiday is here and most of Britain is now open (not necessarily a good thing).

A letter in an agriculture publication caught my eye this week. It appears that a newspaper reported that a certain animal disease testing station 'mislaid' a testtube of foot and mouth virus before it all began. I for one have written a letter to my local MP to ask questions in parliament about this as have others. Now this may just be a conspiracy theory and I certainly hope it is but if it isn't then some serious questions need to be asked of the government in this country.

Debby