When the new year is welcomed in, we hope for good fortune in the months that lie ahead. But 25 years ago, right across the British countryside, good fortune was nowhere to be seen. Instead, 2001 was to be one of the blackest years ever, as an unexpected epidemic of foot and mouth disease swept the land.
For eight months, the disease was on the rampage. It resulted in the deaths of more than six million farm animals, threatened the livelihoods of many farming families, cost nearly £14 billion in today’s money and virtually closed down rural Britain. And it could happen again. So, a quarter of a century later, have lessons been learnt to prevent another devastating outbreak?
During the epidemic Countryfile reported on little else and I vividly recall the blazing funeral pyres – flocks and herds destroyed in mere hours after taking generations to build – and the overwhelming sense of loss and shock felt down many a country lane.
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In the early days, a Warwickshire farmer talked to us by the ‘No Entry’ sign at his gate. Tears rolled down his cheeks as he described how a ministry team had dispatched his entire herd of cattle as they lay in their stalls. I was to hear many similar stories during the following months as cases grew to 2,000.
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Animals on farms neighbouring the infected ones were also culled, exclusion zones were set up and, with travel almost impossible, rural tourism nosedived. It became clear how much small farms depended on their B&B businesses – and that disappeared. With the bodies piling up, the Government was accused of acting too slowly and the British Army was called in.
Brigadier Alex Birtwistle was tasked with finding a solution. A mass burial site was needed and he chose a disused airfield in Cumbria: lorries brought more than 500,000 carcasses to be dumped into massive pits. Afterwards this graveyard was to become a place of peace and beauty, with wildflower meadows, woods and wetlands.
It’s now the Watchtree Nature Reserve and to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the epidemic in 2011, I had the honour of joining Birtwistle to plant an oak tree there. Watchtree was one good thing to emerge from the crisis.
There was much criticism of the way the outbreak was handled; several inquiries investigated and put forward proposals. At the time, I was surprised at the long distances animals were transported, from farm to farm and to abattoirs. The first reported case, involving pigs in Essex, was linked to a Northumberland farm 300 miles away that had been the outbreak’s source.
Changes have been made – including the introduction of controls over the movement of livestock – but, in this 25th anniversary year, does more need to be done to limit the scale should another disaster occur? Yes, says the National Audit Office (NAO).
Since 2001 there have been other disease threats, most notably bird flu. In a recent report, the NAO said key public bodies were insufficiently prepared for a major animal disease outbreak and would likely struggle to cope with one. It added that factors such as climate change and anti-microbial resistance meant outbreaks are increasingly frequent and livestock more vulnerable.
“A long-term strategy and action plan are urgently needed to protect national economic resilience as well as food security, human health and rural communities,” said Gareth Davies, head of the NAO. “DEFRA [Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs] has assessed that the risk of an outbreak to which it would be unable to respond effectively is above the level it considers tolerable, but it has not determined a way to reduce this risk.”
Shortly after that, DEFRA announced it had updated its strategy for dealing with a foot and mouth outbreak. But the government’s chief veterinary officer Christine Middlemiss told Vet Times: “It would be true to say that while we’re not expecting an outbreak anything like the size or scale of 2001 because of the many processes and controls we have put in place, a large outbreak with tens of infected premises – particularly scattered around the country – would stretch us, for sure.”
DEFRA also pointed out the £1 billion investment in the National Biosecurity Centre at Weybridge in Surrey, which aims to enhance the detection and control of high-risk diseases. Its spokesperson told me: “We will do whatever it takes to protect farmers.”
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