PUDDLETOWN, U.K. – Shotgun shells roll across the dashboard of Simon Banfield’s Land Rover.
Earlier that day, he had to shoot three dairy heifer calves.
He lined them up at the edge of a trench and, one by one, shot each week-old calf in the head.
Then he and his herdsman covered up the trench and returned to their chores.
“A Charolais steer was at Yeoville yesterday,” the herdsman says.
“They only offered 90 quid for it so the auction rang up the farmer and told him to come take it away.”
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“That’s terrible,” replies Banfield.
“That cow had her calf earlier today.”
“What was it?” asks Banfield.
“A bull.”
“Good.”
By being born male and sired by an Angus bull, that calf can be finished on grass and sold as Aberdeen Angus beef to the Waitrose supermarket chain for a premium price.
Female calves are set aside for a week when Banfield shoots another batch of heifers.
He has no choice.
In the aftermath of the bovine spongiform encephalopathy crisis in Britain, heifers have no value as veal or beef in the British market. The alternative is to pay £40 a head to ship them to a dedicated abattoir for slaughter and incineration.
It is believed the disease can be passed from dam to calf. Unless heifer calves go into the breeding herd, they have no value. They can’t be sold as beef.
“It’s just bloody awful. I’m miserable for the rest of the day,” Banfield said in an interview on his farm near Dorchester.
“It’s the most disgusting, dishonorable thing I have ever had to do.”
Banfield grows cereals and forage on 1,000 acres for his 140-cow dairy. Prices for all farm commodities have plummeted in England and he is still recovering from having the worst case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy in Dorset County.
The farm has been free of BSE for seven years but Banfield feels bitter and betrayed by agricultural experts, feed companies and government.
He saw his first case of BSE in late 1987 in a four-year-old cow. As he watched his most productive cows die, he did not know what was wrong or why it was happening.
Banfield eventually lost 118 cows.
The first cows to go down were checked by his vet for brain tumors, toxins or other illnesses.
The diagnosis was BSE, a reportable disease ravaging dairy herds across England since 1985. By 1987, British scientists had linked the cause to protein supplements made from BSE-infected cattle and fed back to other cattle.
At Banfield’s farm, the deadly pattern repeated itself almost daily.
A seemingly normal cow would enter the milking parlor in the morning. By evening, the same cow refused to enter.
The cows’ peripheral vision was affected and they became easily agitated. They were spooked by sudden noises such as a dog barking or a tractor starting. Unsteady on their feet, they spread their legs outward in an attempt to regain their balance.
On a number of occasions, Banfield called the vet to examine one cow. By the time the vet arrived, three other cows were licking their nostrils and stumbling about the yard.
At first, the government paid full market value for the stricken animals. But as the epidemic spread across England, the compensation was cut in half.
“The government was very quick to realize that this was potentially a serious situation but not linked to human health,” Banfield said.
“It was a large number of cases on a very small number of dairy farms to start with.”
About 30 percent of dairy herds were widely affected while another third never had a single case of the disease.
Banfield grew 99 percent of his own feed ration, to which he added a commercial product that contained 42 percent protein.
The brand name was Sea Mill so he assumed it was fish meal. In fact, it contained bovine meat and bone meal but there were no labeling requirements at that time so he did not know.
Pinpointing the source of infection was difficult because the farm bought protein from several different suppliers.
Banfield was told there was no threat to human health so he did not have to dump the milk. In hindsight, he should have insisted on knowing the ingredients in the supplements.
“I admit we were na•ve in many ways.”
Banfield suspects that feed companies looking for cheaper products gradually decreased fish meal and substituted meat and bonemeal from cattle. The companies then guarded the ingredients of their products as proprietary information.
An investigation has laid some of the blame on a deregulation policy that began during former prime minister Margaret Thatcher’s tenure. Regulations at all levels of agriculture and food processing were to be administered with a light touch.
Today, Banfield is forced to use more costly soy meal imported from the United States and he must guarantee customers that the milk from his dairy contains no genetically modified material.
He has been battered financially, lost genetic potential in his herd and given away a piece of his heart in this post-BSE age.
The losses continue to reverberate.
Because no British beef or live animals are exported, Banfield’s veal calf trade with France has disappeared.
He used to receive £160 per calf . Now, he has to pay to have them destroyed or shoot them himself to save the expense.
He joined a farm quality assurance program covering his beef, dairy and cereals. His farm is subject to regular inspections and he must maintain farm records for seven years.
To further guarantee safety, all bovines require passports that record every movement to and from the farm. While he dislikes the paperwork, Banfield supports complete traceability and farm assurance schemes that are designed to restore consumer confidence.
His farm office wall is lined with farm assurance record books for every product he produces. His safe is full of cattle passports and his filing boxes are filled with farm records. In addition to the records, he must abide by each commodity’s code of practice.
He figures dairy inspections cost £100 and beef inspections cost £80 per animal.
“We all realize it is going to be necessary forevermore,” said Banfield.
