The story of enquiries about disposing of animal carcases in old mines
probably comes from the same stable as the one about timber merchants being
asked about their stocks of timber for funeral pyres some months before the
present outbreak of foot and mouth started. According to William Rees-Mogg,
writing in The Times yesterday, the background to the latter was as follows.
Early last year, there was a suspected case of foot and mouth in a Romanian
water buffalo, imported into England to provide milk for mozzarella cheese.
(No, I am not making this up.) Tests showed that this was a false alarm, but
someone in MAFF asked what they would have done if the buffalo had tested
positive. Some enquiries were started, and a few timber merchants were
telephoned to find out about their stocks of timber. Then there was an
outbreak of swine fever, and MAFF's epidemic team were taken off their foot
and mouth enquiries and put onto the swine fever. By the time they came back,
the present outbreak of foot and mouth had started.
In any case, you would have expected routine disaster planning to cause
enquiries about useful supplies and facilities to be made from time to time,
but if such planning in MAFF existed, it does not seem to have extended to
reading and adopting the conclusions of the report into the 1967 foot and
mouth outbreak. This stressed the need to slaughter suspected animals at
once, call out the Army, bury carcases rather than burn them, etc.
Christopher J Williams, 65 Stancliffe Avenue, Marford, Wrexham LL12 8LN
Tel: 01978 852601
|