Labour's foot-in-mouth

Four weeks after the foot-and-mouth epidemic broke out, British farming is down to its knees. And, says HASAN SUROOR, the farmers accuse the Blair Government of mishandling the situation.

A CARTOON in The Guardian, showing an Orwellian animal farm where a herd of sheep wake up to a midnight knock and a voice saying: ``Open up, comrade sheep! We have come to liquidate you as a class'', may have been intended to raise a laugh but it also summed up the grim reality that stares Britain in the face as vast stretches of the countryside turn into a death row with hundreds of cattle already slaughtered and hundreds more waiting to be killed in the wake of the foot-and-mouth outbreak. Plumes of smoke from mass funeral pyres dotting the rural horizon tell a story of devastation which, many feel, may not have assumed such proportions if the crisis had been handled more competently.

Four weeks after the disease broke out, British farming is down to its knees, rural tourism which should have been thriving at this time of the year is a non-starter and, more ominously, there is talk of a ``rural revolt'' as farmers accuse the Blair Government of having mishandled the situation. The fragile political consensus broke down this week with the Tories deciding to go on the offensive to be seen to be in tune with the public mood. The loss to the economy is estimated at a staggering £ 9 billions with tourism alone accounting for nearly half of it. But far more damaging is the political cost as even staunch Labour supporters are unhappy with its handling of the crisis. An opinion poll this week showed that nearly 47 per cent believed the Government had bungled and though Labour was still a favourite to win the coming general election the message was that this support should not be mistaken for an approval of its strategy to deal with the foot-and-mouth epidemic. ``If this perception grows, it could be a serious problem for the Government,'' a commentator warned.

Even as the Agriculture Minister, Mr. Nick Brown, has indicated that the crisis might last several months, the Prime Minister, Mr. Tony Blair, is adamant about going ahead with general elections on May 3. This has further inflamed feelings and the move is widely perceived as a measure of ``insensitivity'' and ``arrogance''. The Government is seen to be placing its immediate electoral interests above the misery of hundreds of thousands of people - farmers and those in ancillary industries - who face financial ruin. Some have called it an attempt to effectively ``disenfranchise'' the rural voters, most of whom are traditional Tory supporters. But even those who dismiss the charge as politically motivated acknowledge that pressing ahead with elections when a substantial section of the electorate is both economically and emotionally gutted would leave a bad taste in the mouth besides distracting attention from the more important task of getting the crisis under control. Labour activists in rural areas have lent their voice to the calls for putting off the elections.

On the question of handling the crisis, the main criticism is that the Government's approach has lacked consistency resulting in a great deal of confusion and ad hocism. Commentators have pointed out that the precautionary measures have been far from uniform - excessively stringent in some areas, and ``astonishingly lenient'' in others, as The Times put it.

Critics believe that the Government's initial response was too laidback and it started claiming too early that the situation was under control. The result was complacency, and some restrictions on movement of cattle were removed rather prematurely. When the situation began to spin out of control the Government panicked and ordered extreme measures such as mass slaughter of even healthy cattle within the three-mile ``exclusion'' zones. This caused a near revolt with farmers threatening to physically prevent the killing of their healthy animals.

Farmers and even some independent experts argued that there was no scientific justification to slaughter hundreds of healthy cattle, and believed that the Government was trying to speed up things with an eye on the elections. The Government's Chief Veterinary Officer was greeted with posters which asked: ``The silence of the lambs for Blair's election?'' The Guardian quoted an independent experts' report as saying that the policy of mass slaughter is ``scientifically mistaken, helps to spread the foot and mouth disease it is meant to contain, is agriculturally and economically suicidal and could be illegal under European law''. Instead, it has suggested vaccination as an alternative. The report criticises the long delays in disposing of the slaughtered animals and says that this may have led to new infections. It confirms what the farmers have been saying: that often it took days before carcasses were removed and meanwhile they had to sit among the dead animals. Similar delays have been reported in destroying infected animals because of a shortage of vets.

After four weeks of mayhem, it is now officially acknowledged that the infrastructure is overstretched and troops have been deployed to help with the slaughter and disposal of dead animals. But vets continue to be in short supply with the result that even identifying and isolating infected animals is taking time. As the crisis shows no sign of a let-up, frustration in the farming community is reaching a flashpoint.

But the Britons retain their sense of humour and this is best summed up in a cartoon in The Times a day after the Government's Chief Veterinary Officer explained to the farmers why healthy cattle needed to be slaughtered. It showed two sheep, marked for slaughter, in deep conversation - one of them saying:``I feel a lot better now the policy's been explained to me.''

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