EUROPHILE LABOUR POLICIES
AND THE CAUSES OF FOOT AND MOUTH DISEASE

Dateline: 25th March 2000

What a nerve this Government has to blame farmers for foot and mouth. (Ministers hit out at farmers” Sunday Times 25th March)

It is the government that continued to allow swill to be given to pigs and allowed even the import and use of airline food (which in most civilised countries is incinerated). It is the Government that continued to allow the import of meat from countries where foot and mouth disease is endemic. It is the Government which embraces the ludicrous European Union and its corrupt and wasteful Common Agricultural Policy and thereby the system which encourages farmers to move sheep around the country to obtain E U quota payments.

It is the Government’s beloved European Union that prevents us burying dead animals. This results in burning animals, which probably increases the spread of the disease (by creating an updraft for the surrounding infective spores which can then spread further). It is the Government’s devotion to the European Union which has closed our local abattoirs so that cattle have to travel thousands of miles.

It is the Government which failed to act quickly enough and deliberately underplayed the seriousness of the outbreak so as not to upset its own cynical timetable for the 2001 general election. Blair had to get foot and mouth out of the way before we could get on with politicians foot in mouth disease.