How British farmers were left ‘staring into the abyss’ after the foot-and-mouth export ban

A ban on meat, livestock and milk had catastrophic consequences for the UK’s £600m export industry, as Michael McCarthy, Stephen Castle and Nigel Morris reported in 2001

(Rex Features)

British exports of meat, livestock and milk were banned by the government and the European Union yesterday as the first outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease for 20 years plunged the farming industry into yet another crisis.

The blanket prohibition, similar in scale to the BSE export ban, could have catastrophic consequences for British farmers, who export nearly £600m worth of beef, lamb and pork annually, both alive and as meat.

The ban, which took effect immediately and will be reviewed at the end of the month by the European Commission’s standing veterinary committee, led the president of the National Farmers’ Union, Ben Gill, to declare: “It is like staring into the abyss. On top of all the problems we have had to surmount in the last few years, the impact is unthinkable.”

The effects of the ban will clearly depend on the source of the outbreak being quickly found and closely contained, by slaughter of all potentially affected animals. Nick Brown, the agriculture minister, said extra resources were being deployed to act swiftly and firmly against the outbreak, spotted on Monday at an abattoir and neighbouring farm in Essex.

“We are faced with what is potentially a very serious situation,” Mr Brown said. “We have to bear down on the source and check every single movement in and out of the area where this has been identified, and to slaughter the infected animals and destroy the carcasses.” The next two days would be crucial for judging the seriousness of the outbreak he said.

All farmers who had no choice but to slaughter livestock affected by the disease would be compensated at the full market value for each animal, Mr Brown said.

He admitted, however, that he was unable to predict how long the ban on exports would be in place. “I cannot promise that these measures will not be prolonged,” he said. “But we have to do whatever we have to do. It’s an EU ban but we’ve been party to the discussions.”

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Where did it come from? Read part two here

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Mr Gill said British farmers would do whatever it took to stop the disease from turning into the disastrously widespread outbreak of 1967, in which nearly half a million animals had to be destroyed.

“It is in the interests of the whole of the British livestock industry that the spread of this disease is halted – there is simply no alternative,” Mr Gill said. “The sooner the outbreak is controlled, the sooner any restrictions can be lifted and that has to be our main priority now.”

What is BSE?

What is ‘mad cow disease’?
Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) is a neurodegenerative disease that can mutate and spread to humans. This strain is known as variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD).

When did the disease first appear?
The first confirmed case in Britain was 1986, but it is notoriously hard to track as its incubation period can be anything from a few months to eight years.

What causes the disease?
It is caused by a deficient protein called a prion. A British and Irish inquiry into the outbreak concluded it had been caused in the UK by feeding cattle the remains of infected cows.  

How dangerous is it to humans?
There have been 177 cases to date of the human strain of mad cow disease in the UK. The last was in 2012.  

How do humans catch it?
According to the World Health Organisation vCJD is most frequently caught by eating beef infected with BSE.

What are the symptoms in humans?
Patients usually experience depression, apathy or anxiety. They have difficulty walking. By the time of death victims are ‘completely immobile and mute’.

What are the symptoms in animals?
Cattle become increasingly aggressive as their nervous system deteriorates and they lose control of movement. Their milk production also drops, with some showing signs of anorexia and lethargy.

When was the last outbreak?
The last major outbreak was in 1992.

What was the cost of the last outbreak?
About 4.4 million cows were killed; 156 people died in the 1990s as a result of contracting the variant of BSE. To date, that number has risen to 177. Financially the cost was estimated between £740m and £980m.

The export ban was imposed in Brussels at the end of a day in which scientists from the Ministry of Agriculture had made strenuous efforts to trace the origin of the outbreak at the Cheale Meats abattoir in Little Warley, near Brentwood, and the adjoining farm, both owned by Mr Paul Cheale.

The disease, which does not threaten human health but is debilitating in all cloven-hoofed livestock, was found in a group of pigs which had been sent to the abattoir for slaughter from two farms in Buckinghamshire and the Isle of Wight.

All three farms, as well as two more suppliers of the abattoir in Stroud, Gloucestershire, and Selby, North Yorkshire, were quarantined, placed under investigation and ringed by five-mile zones in which animal movement was prohibited.

The government’s chief veterinary officer, Jim Scudamore, said that suppliers to the Essex premises were from all over the UK, including Northern Ireland, the north of England and Scotland, although there were no foreign animals involved.

Officials were trying to trace “a lot of vehicle movements, a lot of animal movements and a lot of movements by people”, he said. “We are going to have to visit a lot of farms.

Although foot-and-mouth can be passed from farm to farm through the air, government scientists were looking at the more likely possibility that animals had caught the disease from one of the transporters used to make deliveries to the Essex abattoir.

Mr Gill said: “I simply cannot stress how important it is that every farmer in Britain with livestock is vigilant to the symptoms of this disease” We must work together to ensure that this outbreak does not become like the nightmare outbreak of the 1960s.” The incubation period for foot-and-mouth is three to 14 days, he said, although the particular strain of virus identified seemed to be showing symptoms a lot faster.

The Food Standards Agency said foot-and-mouth posed no threat to food safety and that the export ban was aimed at stamping out the spread of foot-and-mouth.

This article first appeared in The Independent on 22 February 2001

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