However, as things stood, we were stuck in the middle of an epidemic, and to object to the process or to the decisions of the government and MAFF was futile. As far as I remember there was little objection raised by the various veterinary bodies at the time, and we all simply complied with the dogmatic rules. There was nothing to be gained by an individual stance. The steamroller was too big and it was fully steamed up.
14
Life in the Protection Zone
Inevitably, it happened – a clinical case on one of our farms. It was in an idyllic spot just outside the village of Knayton. The farm was a lovely place, a traditional suckler herd with gentle, Hereford cross cows and the most kind and gentle stockman called Bert.
I was at Thirsk auction mart, inspecting all the cattle and sheep as they went through the market. I had been there since 5 a.m., and I was, yet again, bleary eyed. I was also on duty, so I had my beeper and phone with me, as I worked my way through the sheep, checking mouth after mouth for the telltale signs of blistering or ulcers, and watched every cow for signs of limping and excessive salivation. There were no signs to be seen this morning. At least, nothing at the auction mart. But, at 7.30 my beeper went off with a message asking me to phone the farmer, this time not after dark but immediately. Bert had been out to check his cattle as they grazed in their field, first thing this Thursday morning. They were all standing still and would not come up to the feed trough to eat. Worse still, they were all drooling heavily. What should he do? I felt sick. There was little doubt that the animals had foot-and-mouth disease. I knew I couldn’t go myself to see the cattle. I still had a lot of animals to examine at the auction mart, and if I attended an infected premises, I would be unable to leave until MAFF had gone through all their procedures. I would also not be allowed to see any farm animals for a week afterwards, to avoid further spread. I gave Bert instructions to phone MAFF and give them all the details directly.
His animals were dead within the day and everything in Thirsk stopped. I knew I would not be supervizing the sale of animals at Thirsk auction mart for some time. All movements were stopped and, since this farm was slap bang in the middle of our area, most of the practice catchment was in the so-called ‘protection zone’. This meant all animals needed to be inspected every forty-eight hours. The cattle and sheep movement inspections that we had arranged that day were suspended, and we held our breath.
It was the first week of July 2001. By this stage, there were about twenty to thirty new cases of foot and mouth occurring every day across the country, compared with just short of three hundred per day in March, when the disease was at its height. This meant that most of the country, and the media in particular, had lost interest, but for us in Thirsk, the nightmare was just beginning. As the media and government were declaring ‘the countryside open’, our villages had culling teams and disinfectant tankers parked all over their grass verges. The killing spree on our farms was truly horrific. The worst point was the day my good friend, Jonathon, the guy who had swapped his car for a bike to try to reduce the risk of infection, found signs in his herd. He was the same age as me, and as I bought into the partnership at the practice, he was taking over the reins of the farm from his father. His milking cows were very dear to him and, of everyone I knew, he was the most tangibly traumatized by the devastation. The day his cows were being killed, I drove to the top of Sutton Bank and went for a walk along the footpath above Gormire, a beautiful lake nestling below the dramatic limestone cliff. Alf Wight referred to this view as ‘the finest view in England’. He was right most of the time, but not on this day. A murky, humid mist hung in the air and there was no wind at all. Eerily, there was no noise either, other than the regular banging of the guns of the cull team, and the hollow moos of cattle being rounded up against their will.
I was seeking solitude and time to rationalize what was happening, but before long I bumped into another farmer called Clive, who had sheep and cattle in a village about a mile away, hopefully safe, at the top of the bank. He was pulling heavily on his hand-rolled cigarettes and I thought about asking him for one, such was my state. We couldn’t really think of anything to say to one another, so we stood there for a few moments and then just walked on, in our own separate directions. It was strange, but there was no need for words.
The closest I came to seeing the disease first hand was during a routine inspection on a large herd of beef cattle. By now, all cattle and sheep in the protection zone (essentially, all our farms) needed to be checked for signs of disease, by a vet, every forty-eight hours. The owner of this particular farm was insistent that MAFF vets did not set foot on his premises, given all the suspicion that MAFF officials were actually, inadvertently, spreading the disease themselves since they had been onto so many infected premises. MAFF, somewhat reluctantly, agreed to let us do some of these checks and I went to the farm every two days for about a month, in my lunch break. The phrase ‘lunch break’ was tenuous, as I hadn’t had a break at lunchtime for months. The cattle were all at grass, so the farmer left me the keys to his quad bike and I would drive around, looking at them all as they grazed in the fields. Aside from being dressed from head to toe in plastic in the heat of the day, it was quite a pleasant way to spend an hour. I could drive up to the cattle and watch them quietly eating grass, and it felt a little bit like being on safari. The cattle were large, traditional and beautiful and it was a great chance to see them contented and in their natural setting. Mostly when we see cattle they are corralled into a handling pen or they are sick and in need of treatment. These cattle were happy and healthy, although as I watched them I was also aware of the tiny specks of men in white suits on the hillside above the farm. I knew those particular white suits did not belong to Thirsk crown green bowling club. The disease was nearby and I had to be vigilant.
I could easily assess the health of the cattle as they grazed in their fields, as sick animals would not walk or eat – instead, they would drool heavily, just like the Herefords near Knayton. However, the next time I visited, on a Friday, I asked the stockman to bring some of the cows in, so I could inspect their mouths and feet in more detail. I usually did this on every second visit or if there was anything suspicious. I arrived, as usual, at lunchtime, but it was not until half past nine in the evening that I left, dressed only in my pants and drenched in disinfectant, with my clothes sealed in a plastic bin bag. I thought I had encountered foot-and-mouth disease first hand and I was very worried.
I had gathered a bunch of about thirty young cattle in the collecting yard and observed. It was hard to say they were actually poorly, but they didn’t look quite right. Many had thin drools of mucousy saliva dribbling from the corner of their mouths. The more I looked, the more I noticed problems. Many of the calves were shifting their weight from foot to foot, as if they had hot feet. On closer inspection the top of the hooves, around the coronary band, was reddish pink and looked sore. I put each of them in the crush for closer inspection. About a third had superficial and small erosions on their gums. I could see no actual ulcers in their mouths – the hallmark of foot-and-mouth – and no actual lesions on the feet. Most of the cattle had temperatures elevated to around 103 degrees Fahrenheit. This was high, but not the 104 or 105 degrees that was symptomatic of the viral infection. The cows seemed to be healthier than the calves, but we were worried. Neither of us had seen anything like this before. It wasn’t classic foot-and-mouth, but it was worrying enough to make the call to MAFF – sick-looking cattle, high temperatures, mouth lesions, drooling, sore feet, within a protection zone and within sight of men in white suits. The veterinary officer on the end of the telephone was less than helpful, and his tone of voice was not what I was expecting.
‘Are you one of us?’ was his first question. Initially, I didn’t understand what he meant by this. In what way? A fellow colleague, or a fellow human being? It soon became clear that he meant a fellow MAFF vet.
I explained that I wasn’t a MAFF vet, but a private practitioner, working on
behalf of MAFF, to inspect cattle within a protection zone at the request of the farmer. At this, he seemed even less convinced about my assessment of the situation. He considered 103 degrees Fahrenheit to be a normal temperature for a calf. I wondered when he had last seen and treated an actual animal. Our conversation was tense, but eventually he agreed to send two MAFF vets to give their verdict, and gave me permission to leave the farm, suitably disinfected, once they had arrived. The two Australian vets who appeared late that evening had both seen clinical cases before. To their credit, they phoned me at home to give me their assessment – another telephone call ‘after dark’. In short, they couldn’t decide, so planned to re-examine the cattle, early the following morning, to see how the clinical signs had progressed. This seemed a sensible course of action, as genuine foot-and-mouth would undoubtedly have advanced to the point where a diagnosis was much more clear, twelve hours later.
I did not hear from the Australian vets again, but I anxiously telephoned the farmer the following morning, a Saturday, to find out the news.
‘We’re all clear,’ was the excited reply.
‘OK, great. What now?’ I assumed that tests had been taken and sent off to the lab for confirmation of the negative diagnosis and, just as important, to find out the actual cause of the signs. If it wasn’t foot-and-mouth, what was it? To me this was the next obvious question.
As it transpired, samples had been taken of some cattle, but once the pronouncement of a negative diagnosis had been made, these were discarded, and not allowed to leave the farm (it was on a ‘D’ notice, which meant animals, manure, samples and so on could not leave). I continued my inspections every forty-eight hours for the next few weeks and saw no more signs of disease. I wanted to take samples to check for other causes of mouth lesions that might explain the problems, but I was thwarted again. Ironically, it was impossible to test for foot-and-mouth since this would trigger the farm being reclassified as a suspect case and the animals would be killed as a ‘Slaughter on Suspicion’ – a classic ‘catch-22’. Several months later, when everything had settled down, I revisited the farm and took several blood tests from cattle that had been drooling, with sore mouths. I sent them to the lab to check for other diseases that may have been the cause of the problems. Every test came back negative. The obvious next question was: ‘Was this foot-and-mouth disease after all?’ There is now no way of knowing, but I remain convinced that it was indeed the virus. My theory is, that in this old, established and traditional breed of cow, possibly with some inherent resistant to the virus, foot-and-mouth had not manifested itself in the same virulent manner that it did in more vulnerable and genetically frail dairy cows. The herd survived and lives on. I’m going there next week to do some jobs. It was a lucky herd and luckier than most at that time in Thirsk.
The pattern of spread was quite surprising and hard to predict in our area. The disease followed, in part, the contours of the Hambleton Hills, from north to south, but like many unfit cyclists, it didn’t make it up Sutton Bank, and no confirmed cases appeared to the east of this escarpment. After the village of Thirlby, it stopped its progress following the curve of the hills, and went south towards the Vale of York. There was much worry that it might affect the pig farms of East Yorkshire. Pigs apparently sent large plumes of virus spiralling in all directions and, according to MAFF, if they were infected the disease would go wild. We thought it had already gone wild as there were very few farms left with any stock. Nevertheless, the enthusiastic killing continued and most of the farms up to a small village called Bagby, one mile from the practice, lost all their animals. Then, in the middle of August, it suddenly stopped. There was a large tract of arable land to the south of Bagby, but this didn’t seem fully to explain the halt. It was almost as if the outbreak got bored and ran out of steam.
So now, six months after the first case, it seemed the crisis was over. At least it was for the farmers. They now had many months of cleaning and disinfection to do. Their farms had never been so clean. Or so empty. During this time, as the vets who attended their needs, we had nearly no farm work to do. On a personal level, I had only recently bought into the practice and now we had lost over half of our farm clients. We had had no income from this side of our practice for nearly a year. How many farms would restock? We guessed some would, but not all. What would they restock with? One farmer, who had two large dairy herds and a massive pig enterprise, spent his compensation on large tracts of housing. This was probably a sensible and lucrative move, but not very helpful for a young vet hoping to pay off his business loan. Eventually the empty farms had ‘sentinel’ sheep added to them, which were blood tested at intervals to see if they had developed antibodies to the disease. This would confirm or rule out the persistent presence of the virus on the unit, and hopefully confirm the thoroughness of the disinfection regime. We had hoped that this blood testing might provide the practice with a role and some income, but this was not to be either. Blood testing a handful of sheep was a great little job for older vets on the cusp of retirement and they snapped up the work. As it happened, some farms did return to livestock, but for many it was an opportune time to leave the crumbling industry. After the BSE crisis ten years earlier, followed by this catastrophic episode, it was a miracle that the UK still had a livestock industry at all. After this chapter, it was severely battered and that had knock-on effects to everyone connected to it. Most of the farms that did restock, did so in a different way. One large dairy herd nearby had farmed two hundred head of dairy cattle but restocked with about forty alpacas. While this is a great diversification and a much easier lifestyle than milking cows twice a day, it doesn’t provide much work for the local vet, tanker driver or foot trimmer, or give many sales to the local feed merchant. The fabric of our rural economy had changed irreversibly.
The practice had survived but we all, individually, had emerged emotionally drained, tired and extremely stressed by the whole experience. On a personal level, I had been left with a persistent and lingering dermatitis, which I put down to a reaction to the copious amounts of disinfectant that I had been using. However, even after our use of the iodine-based solutions had decreased to pre-epidemic levels, the persistent itchy lesions on my back stubbornly refused to go away.
15
The Persistent Itch
I had spent a large part of 2001 enveloped in a plastic outfit and doused with iodine, as part of the effort to reduce the risk of spreading foot-and-mouth disease. As vets, we always clean and disinfect our boots before leaving a farm, but in 2001 we took this to epic proportions, and would spend tracts of time every day cleaning and spraying ourselves, and our vehicles, with disinfectant. After visits we would literally cover ourselves in the stuff. The smell was everywhere. This, coupled with the sweaty environment inside my plastic overalls, could easily explain the itchy lesions that appeared all over my back. I’d never suffered from this problem before, but after constant sleepless nights spent scratching to the point of bleeding, and after several failed attempts with veterinary remedies (well, they work in dogs, so I guessed they would be good for me!), I went to see the doctor, who thought it was eczema. I was sent away with large tubs of cream, similar in appearance to the ‘evil salve’. The cream was as ineffective as my own veterinary treatments.
It took many more GP visits, and various homegrown attempts at diagnosis and treatment (including going out in the middle of the night to the newly opened twenty-four-hour Tesco to buy a complete new set of clothes, in case it was caused by an allergy to the washing powder we used), before I was referred to the dermatologist. After a six-week wait (I manage to see my itchy patients the same day), I visited the specialist at Friarage Hospital in Northallerton. I owe much to this man for, despite taking multiple calls on his mobile phone during the consultation, he knew instantly the cause of my intractable itchiness. I went for a biopsy (another month’s wait: I biopsy my skin cases the next day), which confirmed the diagnosis. Far from being eczema or an allergy to disinfectant,
I had a condition called dermatitis herpetiformis.
Dermatitis herpetiformis is a rare skin manifestation of coeliac disease and is caused by intolerance to gluten. According to one internet forum, the extreme discomfort it brings is described as follows: ‘You get completely sunburnt, fall in a patch of nettles and then jump in an ants’ nest.’ It is so desperately itchy and so underdiagnosed by doctors that some sufferers commit suicide. I felt lucky to have had a relatively early diagnosis. Not that I was ever quite at the point of suicide, but I was in a pretty desperate place. During those months in 2001, I had been faced with the anxiety of foot-and-mouth disease and the stress of not knowing whether my newly purchased business would have a future without cattle and sheep. I had survived on precious little sleep because of the terrible itchiness and, on top of this, the industrial doses of antihistamines that I had been prescribed, when it was assumed to be an allergy, meant that every time I sat down on a sofa, I fell asleep. My energy levels were at an all-time low and my pasty complexion was clue enough to my perilously low iron levels, also caused by the disease. Clients would often comment about me looking tired, and I knew there had also been a handful of comments about me not being very cheerful during consultations. The diagnosis of DH, although very serious, at least provided some explanation for my pallor, itchiness and general weariness. Thinking back, I saw that the signs had been present for longer than I had realized. It explained why, after excelling at cross country at school, I lost all my speed and form, and never rose above the fourth team in the university cross country club, when really I should easily have been able to make the second team. The undergraduate’s diet of toast, pies, pasta and beer could not have been more packed with gluten. I could not have designed a more toxic diet if I had tried.
: The Life of a Yorkshire Vet Page 14
