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Virus alert ignored for three years
Jason Burke, Kamal Ahmed and Paul Harris
Sunday March 25, 2001
The Observer
Crucial scientific advice that could have averted the foot and mouth disaster
was ignored by the Government for more than three years on economic grounds.
The advice, which came from the Government's own panel of agriculture
experts set up to deal with the BSE epidemic, would have stopped contaminated
pigswill being fed to animals - thought to be the cause of the original
outbreak in north-east England.
But the Government rejected a ban on pigswill - the slops from airline food,
restaurants and school dinners - because this would have hit farmers, who
would then have had to buy expensive feed.
The disclosure was seized on by opposition parties yesterday, who pointed out
that such a saving had cost the economy £9 billion, and called the revelation
'devastating', saying it revealed how badly the Government was handling the
epidemic, which spread to nine more farms yesterday.
In 1998 the Spongiform Encephalopathy Advisory Committee (Seac) told
agriculture Ministers that they should outlaw the feeding of swill containing
catering waste to pigs to prevent the transmission of diseases.
The advice was ignored because the Government was concerned about the
economic consequences of a ban. This week the Government is expected finally
to announce a ban on pigswill.
Professor Harriet Kimbell MBE, a Seac member, said: 'One should never recycle
pigs to pigs, sheep to sheep. Anything that is from the same species is a
risk and should be stopped.'
'You have to wonder why the hell we continued to bother with pigswill for so
long,' said Peter Jinman, a vet and Seac member. 'The benefits cannot
possibly outweigh the risks. Now we have learnt that lesson the hard way.'
The news will add to the sense of crisis dogging the Government over the
foot and mouth affair.
Senior figures in the Labour Party are for the first time talking about a
'short pause' in plans for a general election, saying that the poll should be
delayed until June.
'When the centre, and I mean by that Downing Street, has control of the
issue, then the general election can go ahead,' said one of Tony Blair's
closest political friends, a very senior figure in the Labour Party. 'That
will take two to three weeks, and that means there should be a short pause in
the general election planning.
'The public will not take kindly to the image of a Prime Minister breaking
off focusing on the foot and mouth issue in order to launch a campaign. That
should be avoided.'
An autumn poll has been all but ruled out.
On a tour of affected areas in Devon yesterday, Blair said the situation had
been 'hellish' for the farming community, adding: 'We are doing everything we
can, not only to get on top of the disease, to control and eradicate it, but
to make sure that people here get not just the compensation they need but
financial help they need for the future.'
The number of reported cases climbed yesterday to 524, as the Government
authorised a policy of automatic slaughter on any farms which shared a
boundary with any infected farm - a significant widening of the cull. There
is no sign that the rate of infection was slowing.
The policy will affect the whole of the UK and will involve the slaughter of
hundreds of thousands of sheep, cattle and pigs.
New plans to control sheep movements will also be announced this week.
Downing Street sources said the movement of sheep hundreds of miles across
the country to market was one of the reasons the disease had spread so
quickly.
Cobra - the Government's national emergency management room beneath the
Cabinet Office in Whitehall - has been opened for the first time since last
year's fuel crisis.
Jonathan Powell, the Prime Minister's chief of staff and one of his most
trusted lieutenants, is to head a crisis team, in effect overruling Nick
Brown, the Agriculture Minister, who has been criticised for failing to bring
the crisis under control. Brown has hinted strongly that the Ministry of
Agriculture, Fisheries and Food may start vaccinating livestock against the
disease in coming days to buy time to kill animals at risk.
However, he ruled out a national vaccination policy. 'There is no question
of [that], but it is right just to consider if it would help our containment
policies locally,' he said. Vaccination would mean an end to British meat and
livestock exports, worth an annual £570 million, for anything from three
months to two years.
The news that Maff ignored advice that would have prevented the outbreak in
the first place will further embarrass the Ministry. Maff documents reveal
that Seac 'felt that recycling pig waste as feed for the same species could
create the potential to spread disease and recommended that the Government
should remove this risk'.
The documents show that the Government agreed to 'consult on the issue of [a
ban on] feeding catering waste containing pig material to pigs' - exactly
what is believed to have happened at Heddon-on-the-Wall, Northumberland,
where the outbreak started. No ban was imposed.
'Pigswill is only one of a number of possible causes being considered. The
Government takes a range of scientific advice in policy decisions,' a Maff
spokesman said. The logistics of the cull are continuing to cause problems,
with the Army helping vets.
'It's like a war,' said one vet yesterday. 'There's mud up to your knees and
carcasses everywhere.'
