Aug 07 2007
Foot and mouth - Brown and Benn give good interviews, but are they on top of the crisis?
Gordon Brown and Hilary Benn are to be praised for coming back from holiday and sitting down to supervise the work on containing and handling the Foot and Mouth crisis. Their memory will tell them that if mistakes are made it could escalate out of control as it did in 2001, doing great damage to the farming and rural industries, killing many cows and leaving us scenes of funeral pyres and closed??countryside the length and breadth of the land.
??I don’t doubt their good intentions. They have no more wish for this to spiral out of control than the farmers who fear for their herds and their livelihoods. The question is, can they drive the government machine to reach a good outcome?
??They say they have learnt the lessons of 2001. The first response to the crisis has to be fast. All moves have to be based on the best available science.
There are a couple of other lessons which anyone who has handled a crisis can pass on. Action not only has to be swift, but it has to be strong enough to tackle the problem at source. Far better to be too heavy handed at the beginning so you can relax more quickly, than to have to come back for more and more controls after events have forced you. Action should also be based on common sense. We elect politicians to hire the best advice, but to exercise judgement and common sense in applying it. Experienced Ministers should know by now there is not one perfect scientific answer to each problem, but a series of hypotheses and arguments that may need resolving by the exercise of independent layman’s judgement following professional disagreement before the Minister.
??Which brings us to the decisions so far. There was an element of risk in drawing such a narrow Exclusion zone. If this was carried by wind or flood water from the labs, it would be wise to draw a wider line around parts of Surrey where it could have reached. There was a double element of risk in not closing footpaths in the Exclusion zone. People can carry the disease, and by definition we know the Exclusion zone area has been exposed to the virus.
??Farmers are up in arms that the dead cattle are to be taken by lorry half way across England for incineration.Ministers defend this as based on the best available science. It does seem strange that infected carcasses would be taken so far, when it should be possible to devise suitable incineration equipment to move closer to?? where the animals died. Given the huge sums of money potentially at risk, money should not be a constraint on safe disposal.
The government also faces the more difficult issue this time of the origins of the outbreak. Most seem agreed that it came from either private sector labs regulated by and acting under contract to the government, or from the government labs themselves. If the government itself does turn out to be the owner or superviser of the offending institution it will need to work hard to win trust back for the establishment, and will be obliged to offer compensaiton to those who have lost. That is another reason why any sensible Minister will give this crisis his full attention, and take every action to make sure it does not spread.
I wish them every success, but I wonder if so far they have been too cautious and too trusting of the advice.
??
John Redwood has been the Member of Parliament for Wokingham since 1987. First attending Kent College, Canterbury, he graduated from Magdalen College...
As a kean walker, the last thing I want to see is all foot paths closed again, but I do think that it would make sense to order a closure of all rural foot paths within 5 miles of the outbreaks first, and then reopen based on risk assessment.
However, I don’t see the need for Brown to have returned from holiday. Never heard of a video conference call ? Although, the press and the opposition would then have criticised him for not returning.
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JR: “Farmers are up in arms that the dead cattle are to be taken by lorry half way across England for incineration. Ministers defend..”
.. the indefensible.
Would you kindly advise if, outside of the immediate exclusion zone, farmers are being offered free F&M vacinations for their livestock? It is established fact that where the “herd” has a high degree of immunity, the infection will not be transferred as easily. If not why not, and what influence does the EU (through its codpiece DEFRA) have on this aspect of policy?
Once again the carcasses are to be incinerated, what about the air polution? How will this method of disposal of the carcasses impact the CO2 levels. Why can’t they just be buried? What impact has the EU through DEFRA had on this aspect of policy?
Why can’t these carcasses by sold off to the pet food industry? Processing at high temperature would destroy the infection.
JR: “The government also faces the more difficult issue this time of the origins of the outbreak.”
What actual freedom of action do Brown and Benn (Bill & Ben?) have and to what extent are their actions dictated by the European Union?
Who is the minister responsible for this establishment? From time to time Crown imunity ought to be waived, he should be pilloried, bankrupted and thrown in gaol. Pour encourager les autres.
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JR: “I do not think the government has yet proposed vaccination - the final irony if it were the production of vaccines that led to the outbreak.”
I doubt the farmers who are currently having their livelyhood destroyed think it ironic. But I suppose perhaps, these things look different from SW1.
Vaccines are by and large dead, a vaccine cannot cause an epidemic. There is no irony if, during the culture of a vaccine the live culture has escaped and been released into the environment. That is not ironic that is gross incompetence and or negligence. I hope they have better precautions in place at Porton Down?
JR: “So far the EU has accepted what the UK has proposed - the EU has allowed vaccination..”
Well that is a comfort, knowing our masters will permitt this or that. In circumstances where we can do a thing because the EU kindly permits it, what is the point of Westminster?
Reply: I always think it important to remind people of the many areas of life where Brussels calls the shots. The Common Agricultural Policy and the Common Fisheries Policy are no advert for more of it. Of course it is not ironic that people’s cows have been killed and their livelihoods ruined by incompetence or worse at a lab. That is not what I said.
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