How right he was. By the following day, the disease had been confirmed officially, and the proverbial had hit the fan. MAFF imposed a movement ban in the area around the infected premises, making it illegal to move any animals, even to a nearby field. By Tuesday of the following week, this movement ban had become nationwide. It became clear that the disease had become widely disseminated even before the first case had been identified, as cases started to appear as far afield as Devon and Cumbria. There was a rapid and dramatic escalation of cases, footpaths were closed and the countryside, and in fact the whole country, ground to a very dazed and stunned halt. Nobody really knew what was happening or what was going to happen. Our farm work immediately stopped. One farmer phoned up to ask me to go and do a routine fertility on his dairy herd and was somewhat bemused when I explained that we would have to postpone any non-urgent visits, as we didn’t want to risk any possible disease spread by undertaking any visits to farms that were not emergencies.
This was a period, around Thirsk at least, that was akin to the ‘phoney war’ of 1939, after Britain had declared war on Germany but nothing really happened. We simply watched the news and the fax machine for unfolding events. So far, at least, our area and our clients were largely unaffected.
That was, of course, apart from the movement restrictions and their consequences. Obviously it is not possible to completely stop the movement of livestock around the country. Sheep needed to be moved back to farms from the hills and far-flung fields so they could be lambed under supervision, pigs and fattening cattle needed to be moved to slaughter as they achieved their finishing weight. In these latter cases, there was simply not enough space on the farms to keep them. Sometimes there was a limited amount of feed. As time went by, dairy cows needed to go out to grass, and would need to be moved from farm to field and back again, twice daily. Suddenly, from having no farm calls to make, we had the huge task of undertaking ‘pre-movement inspections’. This meant that we had to visit and inspect any animals before they were moved from a farm to go directly to slaughter. We were also given the task of issuing licences to move animals from farm to farm under special circumstances. This became the activity that took most of our day and we became experts in inspection and, more importantly, the filling in of paperwork.
On a typical day, at this point in the outbreak, I would do between ten and twenty movement inspection visits. About twenty minutes would be spent inspecting the animals for signs of suspicious disease, followed by about thirty minutes filling in and processing the paperwork. As the disease got closer and closer to Thirsk, I noticed that the time needed to do the paperwork seemed to become greater, which left us with less time to inspect the animals. This was ironic, as we should really have been focusing more time on the inspection rather than the forms. We simply did not have enough hours in the day. Pigs would be loaded, in the darkness, for movement to slaughter at 5 a.m. most mornings, so this was the start of our day. I’m not sure quite how effective our bleary-eyed inspections were at this time, but nevertheless, everybody was relieved once the all-important piece of paper was handed over. We would go on like this all day, and I remember arriving on one farm at 10.30 in the evening to undertake the last inspection of the day by torchlight. If anything suspicious was identified it spelt disaster for the farmer, and his neighbours. The pigs or cattle would not be able to be moved, and draconian restrictions would be placed. Panic would ensue, and MAFF vets would swoop in with their conspicuous white overalls.
In these early stages of the epidemic, the other type of inspection in our area was the ‘Dangerous Contact Tracing Visit’. These were undertaken by MAFF vets, or vets who had been recruited by MAFF to help with the outbreak. They involved inspecting farms where there were considered to be animals at risk, for example, cattle or sheep that had been at the same market as an infected animal. MAFF produced elegant maps criss-crossed with lines tracing the progress of those animals known to have been infected. Dangerous Contact Tracing Visits were conspicuous, because unfamiliar vehicles would be spotted at the end of a farm track and men in white plastic suits would be seen squirting their boots with disinfectant. One particular veterinary inspector, who had been coerced out of retirement to help with these inspections, was more conspicuous that most. He drove a Rolls-Royce with the personalized number plate VET. I never met him, but I had seen his vehicle and his large frame, wrapped in white plastic, from a distance. Wherever his car was seen, rumours would follow. Suspicion and stories were everywhere and rumours of cases – lame sheep seen in fields, for example – spread quickly through the close-knit and terrified community.
On one occasion there was great consternation that there had been a confirmed case just up the road, about half a mile from our practice. A collection of vehicles had been spotted in the layby, outside Mile House Farm on the road to York. Several people, all dressed in white outfits, were congregating with intent, and by lunchtime it seemed certain that Mr Swales’ farm had ‘gone down with it’. Only later did the truth emerge. Thirsk’s crown green bowling team had an away fixture at York that day, and the team had agreed to meet in the layby so they could all share a lift together. Apparently the competition gear for crown green bowling is an all-white outfit.
By the end of the first few weeks of the outbreak, the nearest case or ‘infected premises’ as MAFF quaintly called the affected farms, was about 15 miles north of Thirsk in the village of Picton. It was not a farm to which we attended, and it was sufficiently isolated from most of our other farms that we felt reasonably safe. We had weathered the early part of the foot-and-mouth storm. Other parts of North Yorkshire, especially Wensleydale and, later, the upper parts of Wharfedale, were being decimated by the rampaging disease. The first case on a farm that I actually knew was in Threshfield near Grassington. By this point, MAFFs website was up and running and we could see all the new outbreaks. It was a family farm where I had spent several happy and informative weeks as a young and enthusiastic student. I knew how devastated they would be, and I sent them a card extending my sympathies. Admittedly it was not much help, but I felt I had, somehow, to acknowledge the terrible time they were going through.
Other parts of the country were being ravaged too, and the farming community was in a state of perpetual fear. Two of our friends, Cath, with whom I shared a house at vet school, and her fiancé Andy, a dairy farmer, were due to get married. They lived near Gloucester, but Cath was from Scotland and their wedding was to take place in the small village of Rannoch in the Highlands. There was much concern about a hundred guests, nearly all vets and dairy farmers, descending on this little village in an area which, so far, was free from foot-and-mouth. It looked as if the wedding might have to be called off. Not only were the residents of Rannoch afraid, but farmers were reluctant to travel at all, for fear of spread of the disease. However, after much debate, it was decided that the celebration could go ahead, provided we all thoroughly scrubbed and disinfected our cars before leaving home. I kept an eye on MAFF’s website to check if there had been any suspect cases cropping up in the Highlands for weeks after our visit.
The practice had an elderly lady client who was very sprightly but slightly eccentric. Mrs G lived in a small village surrounded by cattle and sheep, on the hills above Thirsk. Her family’s farm was one of the closest in the practice to the Picton case, and I would get regular updates of the situation in her village. One evening, I returned from an early season cricket match, to a slightly bemused Anne, who had taken a very cryptic message from Mrs G. The conversation had gone something like this:
‘Hello, can I speak with Julian, please?’
‘I’m afraid he’s not in. Can I take a message?’
‘Where is he?’
‘He’s playing cricket at Ampleforth.’
‘Oh. Can you tell him to phone me after dark?’
‘Yes. I’ll ask him to give you a ring when he gets back.’
‘No. Please tell Julian to phone me after dark.’
So, after
I got back from cricket, I waited until darkness had fallen, then returned the call.
Mrs G had information about lorries passing her house and through her village. It was unusual because the village was small, and lorries did not often frequent the tiny lanes. She was suspicious that the vehicles were being used to transport dead animals – something that had been happening in affected areas, as animals were killed on the farm and then loaded up to be taken to the nearest pyre. It was causing general concern, and rightly so, that this could be a source of spread of the disease. She wanted to know if there had been a case nearby? I think the significance of the darkness was so that she wasn’t seen through her window passing on sensitive information, although I’m still not sure! On that occasion there was no such case near her village, but it wasn’t long before our first farm was flagged up to be culled as a ‘dangerous contact’. It had only been a matter of time.
It was another evening telephone call, this time from a farmer who had cattle, sheep and pigs. His was my favourite farm to visit.
‘They want to come and kill everything tomorrow morning,’ was John’s typically phlegmatic opening sentence. ‘What can we do?’
John and I had been friends ever since I first started at the practice, and I got on very well with him and all of his staff. Tom and Ray were two of the best stockmen I have ever worked with and it was always a great pleasure to tend to their animals. Soon after I started work at Thirsk, I had diagnosed an insidious disease called bovine viral diarrhoea, or BVD, in his herd. There had been subtle but serious problems with the herd over quite some time, and when the diagnosis was made, John’s mother, who was one of those dynamic elderly ladies with undying enthusiasm, knowledge and vigour, arranged a meeting with John, myself, Ray and Tom to discuss how to tackle the disease. This kind of herd planning is now commonplace in large animal veterinary practice, but at that time it was a very forward-thinking step. As a new vet it was a daunting meeting, but as a result, we developed a great and friendly working relationship and mutual respect. So it was a sad day, that June evening, when I got that phone call. A neighbouring farm had had its animals killed under the ‘Slaughter on Suspicion’ rule, that meant animals could be killed before laboratory tests had confirmed the presence of foot-and-mouth. It was a contentious policy but was seen as crucial, to avoid the delay of four days it took for the laboratory to achieve a definitive diagnosis. It was argued that this four-day wait could allow further spread. John’s farm was within one and a half kilometres of this suspected case, and his animals were therefore subject to being killed under the equally contentious ‘Contiguous Cull’ policy. This was a policy introduced to kill animals on farms surrounding a confirmed or suspected case. There was, apparently, a one in three chance that animals within a one and a half kilometre radius would contract the disease. Therefore killing them immediately would (in theory) stop its onward spread.
I cancelled my evening arrangements and immediately set about getting all the facts, or as many as I could, about the nearby case, the whereabouts of John’s animals, proximity to roads and other barriers to disease transmission such as woods, arable fields or rivers. It became clear that his pigs were the animals most at risk, as they were closest to the IP (infected premises). The rest of his animals were grazing several kilometres away on the opposite side of a major dual carriageway. They were isolated from any other stock to the east by woodland and moors, and therefore clearly no risk to any other farms. The obvious and sensible plan was to cull the pigs and monitor the rest of the animals for signs of disease. Pigs were a major risk in the spread of disease because they shed vastly more virus than other animals, so in the face of this suspected outbreak, they really did need to be culled. However, it seemed clear that there was absolutely no need to kill the other healthy cattle and sheep, which were well out of the risk zone.
My protests to the duty officer at the Newcastle Animal Health office fell on deaf ears. MAFF’s killing spree was in full flow by now, and no one was going to listen to the sensible objections of a vet on the ground, even though he might actually have some useful information and comment to make. Policy was dogmatic, unwavering and, sadly, misguided in many ways.
Thankfully, we were not involved in the killing on IPs.
This intrusion onto our first farm focused everybody’s thoughts in the area. Until now, Thirsk had been reasonably unaffected by clinical cases and restrictions on normal life were based on the pre-movement rules and inspections, the increasing numbers of tracing checks and things like footpath closures (which appeared to be blanket, regardless of whether footpaths went anywhere near grazing animals). But now everything had changed. Disinfectant mats and footbaths appeared everywhere and paranoia descended. One farmer sold his Land Rover and swapped it for a car, because he thought it would be easier to disinfect. Another took to his bicycle as a means of transport for the same reasons, though this turned out to be futile as his farm eventually succumbed to the disease.
One evening, Anne was returning home across the A66, after visiting her aunt in Lancashire. It was mainly single carriageway, so it was difficult to overtake lorries and, as often happened, she was stuck behind one. She was alarmed to see a noxious liquid dribbling out of the back of the lorry and all over the road. Not just all over the road, but all over her car. When she tried to use her windscreen wipers to clears the splashes that were obscuring her view, horrible fatty grease was smeared all over the windscreen. Eventually when the chance arose to overtake, it was obvious that the lorry was of the kind that Mrs G had spotted going through her village. It was one of the lorries that carried culled foot and mouth-infected animals to a burial site, rendering facility or pyre. It was leaking infected fluid all over one of the main roads across the north of the country. Was there any wonder we could not control this highly infectious disease? Anne detoured on her journey back home, through a car wash and disinfection point. With this kind of grotesque and clumsy error, what on earth was the point in selling your Land Rover and travelling around Thirsk on your bicycle?
Increasingly, as the epidemic progressed, there was growing cynicism about the management and handling of it. Episodes such as this added to the speculation that the spread of the disease was being perpetuated by the killing teams. They had much to gain financially, as the slaughter teams, disinfectant teams and transportation companies had negotiated lucrative contracts to provide their services on an immediate and urgent basis. One farmer whose cows became infected with the disease found the tail of a cow in the same field in which he first saw signs in his own animals. He drew the obvious conclusions. Vets swarmed from all corners of the world to work for MAFF. The South Africans, in particular, did well. The value of the rand against the pound meant that South African vets could earn the equivalent of three years’ salary in just six months. Foot-and-mouth disease was prevalent in South Africa, and they really didn’t see what all the excitement was about.
There were allegations that some farmers actually wanted the disease to be confirmed on their farms, or were trying to become condemned as dangerous contacts, as the financial compensation for compulsory slaughter of your herd or flock was, quite rightly, substantial. Certainly, it could be considered that an elderly farmer, on the point of retirement and disillusioned with farming, could not get a better end-of-career payout, just like the mining redundancies for coal miners in the 1980s. However, I have to say, I did not see this at all, and when the disease finally hit Thirsk, not one farmer I met nor anyone connected with the industry had this sentiment. Generally, people who farm stock care deeply about that stock and it is, more often than not, their life’s work. In fact, when foot-and-mouth struck Thirsk, I have rarely seen men, young and old, as broken.
Cynicism was also hanging over the government’s handling of the outbreak, and its motives became increasingly under scrutiny. Allegedly, some compensation cheques were signed by the ‘European Stock Reduction Fund’, suggesting that there was a plan behind the extensive and wanton killing,
over and above the desire to halt the spread of disease. There were rumours that MAFF had ordered huge supplies of wooden railway sleepers just weeks before the outbreak started. Apparently, this was attributed to a strategic planning exercise being undertaken by MAFF that happened to be scheduled immediately before the disease appeared. Who would have thought the department was as well organized as that? At this point, super-efficient organization did not seem its forte and so the speculation was, rightly or wrongly, that it had been buying up wood for the enormous pyres, and its credibility was questioned still further.
And, of course, what about vaccination?
Both human and veterinary medicine has benefited from this wonderful tool in the battle against infectious disease. Discovered in the late eighteenth century and refined by Edward Jenner, the first vaccine for a human disease – smallpox – was developed from a similar contagious disease of cattle – cowpox. The irony that cows had been inextricably connected with the discovery and refinement of the process of vaccination is inescapable. Nearly two hundred years later, rather than benefiting from the biotechnology that would have saved tens of thousands of animals, cattle and sheep were not privileged enough to make use of this preventative technique. It was deemed, in the UK, that the best way to prevent an animal getting a disease was to kill it. Of course, the reasons for not using vaccination were down to compliance with EU rules and also its impact on the trade of our livestock and its meat with the rest of the world. It seemed to escape the notice of the politicians that, if the killing continued as it was, we simply wouldn’t have any livestock to export anyway. Despite avoiding vaccination, the country was still banned from exporting meat and live animals for a year, because the UK was a country that had actually had the disease. The Netherlands, by contrast, swiftly used vaccination in the very early outbreaks that occurred there, in the spring of 2001. Their epidemic, using vaccination as a control method, lasted only two months. I do not know of a European country whose meat export industry is more critical to its economy than that of the Netherlands. The Netherlands exports five times as much beef as the UK and a many times greater volume of pork. This country had an altogether different way of handling the outbreak to preserve its export industry. The inflexible EU rules were treated much more flexibly on their side of the channel.
: The Life of a Yorkshire Vet Page 13
