CALDBECK, U.K. – Ann and David Noble can list the dates of the foot-
and-mouth disease catastrophe off the tops of their heads.
They talk like people who have lived through a disaster, because for
them and their farming community in rural Cumbria in northern England,
the FMD outbreak of 2001 was a devastating plague that threatened their
livelihoods, ravaged the farm economy, turned farmer against farmer and
led to lasting hostility toward government veterinarians.
It’s a year now since the plague passed, and they’re able to chuckle
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about the bazaar life they were forced to lead, but the Nobles still
have the outbreak at the tops of their minds, like a trauma that they
haven’t recovered from but have learned to live with.
Occasionally anger and disgust flashes when David talks about what he
and local farmers went through in dealing with government veterinary
authorities, who they think were woefully unprepared to deal with the
situation, and who they blame for making the situation far more
traumatic than it had to be.
A sense of betrayal marks everything David says about how the outbreak
was handled. Ann shares these sentiments, even though she once worked
as a government veterinarian fighting bovine spongiform encephalopathy.
Ironically, Ann and David have suffered more than most local farmers
because they were fortunate, if that word can be used to describe their
fate.
Their farm was one of only two in a large area to be allowed to keep
its sheep and cattle, and their animals were never infected by the
disease.
If they had accepted a government compensation offer to exterminate all
their livestock, which was offered to all farmers within a certain
radius of diseased flocks, they could have sat out a season, then
restocked their farm the next year. But David raises pedigreed breeding
stock of a rare breed of high country sheep and he and Ann weren’t
willing to throw their flock away without a good reason.
They lost a flock of 90 yearling females that were being pastured on
another farm, but agreed with that cull because cattle on the farm
became infected.
Foot-and-mouth disease swept into their area soon after the British
outbreak was first noted in an Essex slaughter house, and farm after
farm became infected.
David kept his sheep and cattle in pens and quarantined the farm so no
one could bring in the disease.
That began a months-long term of semi-isolation, in which David only
left the farm once or twice between March and August 2001.
Whenever Ann returned to the farm, bringing their children home from
school and from her job at a local veterinary practice, she would stop
a few hundred metres from the farm and wash the Land Rover with
disinfectant. She and the children would strip off the clothes they
wore in the village and immediately wash them.
Every night on the phone, David and other farmers discussed the spread
of the disease, using pins on a map to track herds. The pins were
steadily marching toward their farm.
During the day he got most of his information from television and radio.
“You were living from one news flash to the next, then going out to see
if your animals were OK,” David said. “It was absolutely paranoid.”
Ann said her skills as a vet helped them quickly assess suspect animals
on the farm, but that didn’t stop momentary panics.
“Anything that seemed odd made your heart race,” she said.
The government had declared a kill zone for animals within three
kilometres of an infected flock, so when a nearby farm’s flock became
infected, their sheep and cattle were ordered destroyed.
But Ann and David fought the order, arguing that the infected animals
were outside the zone.
They won their appeal, their animals eventually proved negative for FMD
infection, and the plague passed.
But saving their sheep and cattle brought a social cost. One local
family was outraged by Ann and David’s decision to fight to keep their
livestock, and they say that family will still not speak to them.
Feelings grew heated between many farm families who began blaming each
other for the spread of the disease in their area.
“A lot of things were said and done that will never, ever be
forgotten,” David said.
But while farmer relationships are slowly healing, they said there is
still general anger against the government’s actions.
The outbreak was at first dealt with far too cautiously, then far too
brutally. Ann blames government cutbacks to the state veterinary
service.
“It has been so run down over the last few years that there were just
not enough staff to deal with it,” she said.
One vet from her practice went to work for the state veterinary service
during the emergency, but for the first couple of days, instead of
being sent to diagnose and destroy infected herds, was put on a backhoe
digging pits to bury animals.
“What a waste,” Ann said.
At the same time, upset farmers were calling her office, begging for
someone to come and kill their infected animals, which were suffering
horribly from the disease.
At the beginning, even if a vet diagnosed a flock or herd with FMD,
they weren’t allowed to destroy it until they had scientific
confirmation from London. Then, once the flock or herd was destroyed,
it wasn’t disposed of for up to two weeks.
“Imagine what that’s like for a farm family, not allowed to leave the
farm, seeing their prize herd of cattle lying out back rotting. That’s
hard on a farmer. That’s hard on the children,” Ann said.
“They (the veterinary service) just didn’t seem to have any contingency
plans.”
Ann and David said the situation got better once the army was sent in
to clear up the mess, but it wasn’t ordered in for weeks after the
outbreak began.
Things are getting back to normal in the high Cumbrian region where
they farm. It’s still oddly sheepless for an area that normally has
white puffs of wool scattered all about the hills and moorlands that
characterize this area. Repopulation will take some time.
David said the scars will take years to heal. And he thinks Canadian
farmers should see what has happened to them and take heed.
“If there’s an outbreak, farmers will be treated like criminals.
They’ll be treated like idiots,” he said.
“Canadian farmers do not want to go through this.”
He said Canadian farmers should pressure their government to be tough
on import controls, because FMD can only come into countries such as
the United Kingdom or Canada from infected foreign lands. And they
shouldn’t trust the government to be prepared for a crisis and be able
to look out for their interests.
“At the beginning they really didn’t seem to take it that seriously.
Then they didn’t seem to know what to do,” he said.
