A newspaper article today quoted from the Netherlands
vetinary journal Tijdschrift voor Diergeneeskunde. In the
1920's the deliberate infection of the entire herd (after
every outbreak) was proposed, as a control measure for
foot-and-mouth disease. The theory is that this accelerates
the natural burn-out which characterises an epidemic.
That was before there were effective vaccines. However the
vaccines are available now, and form an alternative to cull
strategies. So there are at least 4 options: deliberate
infection, vaccination, natural burn-out, and cull.
The point is, that is not how governments present the issue.
It is the ideology I am concerned with here.
The ideology is that the outbreak is an unquestionable
disaster, self-evidently negative and disbeneficial,
affecting the entire national community which requires a
unified national effort, to enforce a single unilinear
strategy, which is the only possible response. None of these
claims are true.
As reports in the Netherlands media indicate, such outbreaks
bring immense financial benefits to the farming industry in
general. If there is a general EU-wide outbreak, possibly
tens of billions of Euro's will be transferred to the
sector. The outbreak, like the BSE crisis, accelerates
comprehensive reform of the EU agricultural policy - not
that the new version will necessarily be any better.
The question that occurred to me at the beginning of the
outbreak in Britain was this. Why should Saddam Hussayn
spend billions on nuclear weapons, if he can ruin the
British economy by coming to Britain incognito, and taking
the dog for a cross-country walk? Now I understand that I
may have underestimated him. The outbreak may strengthen the
British economy, so perhaps his agents should be closing off
footpaths. But that is what the British government is doing anyway.
The apparent logic in what is happening collapses, when it
is examined closely. To use a famous misquote from Marx,
'all that is solid melts into air'. If there was such a
thing as an oppositional, non-mainstream, non-conformist
academic culture (the self-image of this list), then
presumably it would question the logic, and question the
ideology. But is that happening?
--
Paul Treanor
http://web.inter.nl.net/users/Paul.Treanor/
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