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Incident or outbreak, the virulence of FMD requires vigilance

Incident or outbreak, the virulence of FMD requires vigilance

The Prime Minister returns from holiday and calls a top level meeting. Animal movements are banned, and cordons thrown around the site of the outbreak. This time there is no doubting the seriousness of the situation. Gordon Brown will be all too aware of the national cost of FMD, money which has to be found from somewhere.

We now hear the outbreak might well have come from the Animal Health Lab at Pirbright. The news provokes a sense of relief - at least it wasn't another farmer whose 'biosecurity' is at fault. Anger, too, that the place which is there to help prevent the problem seems to have caused it. Humphrey Malins, the local MP (Con) is a lawyer representing a suburban constituency. His Sunday morning reaction was to encourage people to get on with their lives, do what they had planned, and enjoy the countryside in this patch of good weather.

There should be no sense of relief that the disease might have come from Pirbright. It's just a virulent, damaging and contagious. There's no cause for breathing a sign of relief - that happens when the outbreak was seen to have been contained to the one farm, and the all-clear is given for the resumption of normal farming.

Until that time, people in the countryside should take additional steps to see that their actions are not likely to spread the disease. So I would have liked Mr Malins to have underlined the need for walkers to make conscientious use of disinfectant foot dips which may be at farm gateways and on foot paths. I'd hope that people out for a Sunday stroll in the area around Pirbright might consider, for this week at least, to keep to the roads and stay away from farms. His upbeat attitude "come on chaps, keep at it, stiff upper lip..." may be entirely appropriate for a terrorist threat, or any other catastrophe which the public has to face, but not one which can be affected by their actions. Which is, of course, the case with FMD. People can, and apparently are, the cause of it's spreading. There was the case of the ham sandwich that contained infected meat which was found near the Waugh's farm in 2002.

Whatever the science, the FMD bug needs killing at source, and it seems as if disinfectant is the bug's biggest enemy. Disinfecting is something which everyone in the countryside, farmers, walkers, visitors, even erg journalists, can do without major sacrifice.

So, my plan is to have a small squirter of ready-mixed Jeyes in the car, which I will use on boots or shoes when I come and go from every farm I visit. The process should be simple, and if the bottle is kept in an airtight container, the smell will, hopefully, not even be noticed by the most sensitive nose. I think it makes a sensible precaution for all in the countryside. As people and livestock travel further and more frequently, so they carry things with them. Some we can see - the spider in the truck cab that has now clocked up 50,000 miles, the dung on the tyre, some of which drops off as I rattle over the cattle grid keeping animals on the common. It's the ones which are invisible that seems to do the damage.

So while the news that Pirbright may be the cause will provide farmers with a target for their ire, one which can be held to account, and one with a sacrificial fall-guy whose career can be demolished as a sacrificial lamb, the incident (and let's hope it is no more than this) serves all in the countryside a timely reminder of the aggressive nature of this disease. FMD occurs in many countries. FMD is a legitimate reason for closing international trade in animals and meat products. There's a lot at stake.