Roast beef or bust

Even if the entire British herd perishes from the foot-and-mouth epidemic, a dripping Argentinean roast will still be waiting on the table, notes Gavin Bowd from London
To quote New Labour's 1997 campaign song, "Things can only get better." After brief glimmers of hope that the foot-and-mouth epidemic had peaked, a wave of new cases has forced Britain's Chief Veterinary Officer to conclude that the epidemic will last for months. Large swathes of the country are now affected. Emergency measures taken to halt the spread of the disease are beginning to affect the British way of life: the countryside is off-limits to ramblers; stray domestic dogs can be shot on sight; the highlight of the horse racing season, the Cheltenham Gold Cup, has been postponed, as have Ireland's international rugby matches.
The first outbreak of foot-and-mouth since 1967 has come on top of "Mad Cow" disease (BSE), extreme weather and the near-farcical disruption of rail services, leading many to wonder: Is Britain falling apart? And does this new agricultural catastrophe indicate a sickness at the heart of the nation?
The epidemic is in any case tarnishing the image of British exports. As the disease has strayed over into the Republic of Ireland, Irish farmers have been quick to grumble about the "half-hearted" actions of the authorities in London and Belfast. In France and other European countries, the race is now on, in the name of the "precautionary principle," to find and kill all livestock imported from across the Channel. While Brussels recognises that, in terms of hygiene, British agriculture is among the best, continental farmers facing bankruptcy associate the United Kingdom with wreck and ruin.
In Britain itself, the epidemic has aggravated the paranoia of "put-upon" country folk. For Clarissa Dickson Wright, a prominent figure in the Countryside Alliance and one of the celebrated Two Fat Ladies of TV cooking show fame, the virus was probably introduced by hostile animal-rights activists bent on destroying farmers and their traditional way of life, i.e. hare-coursing, fox-hunting and other gratuitous acts of cruelty abhorred by the majority of the British public. And the apparently Middle-Eastern origins of this particular outbreak conjure up other familiar demons!
Wright's allegations may seem far-fetched, but such a conspiracy theory does put a finger on an essential truth: the vulnerability to viruses of a complex modern society. The foot-and-mouth epidemic has shown to the British public and the world at large the drawbacks of modern agriculture. The disease has been able to spread much more rapidly than before because of the long distances that livestock are obliged to travel quickly between farms, markets and abattoirs.
Of course, Britain, like many other countries, has had drove roads since time immemorial. But the development of transport networks and of a supermarket system that tries to cope rapidly and flexibly with consumer demand has increased the number of animals on the road, thereby easing the spread of one of the most virulent viruses known. The crisis has jolted the Blair government into calling for a re-orientation of farming policy: a reduction in intensive-farming and a reversal of the policy of closing local abattoirs. The power of the supermarkets is now in question, but so is the desire of the consumer, whose insatiable appetite for cheap meat has driven agribusiness down this road to ruin.
The epidemic does not put only British farmers in the dock. As British supermarkets tried to replenish depleting meat counters by importing from Europe, it was found that continental farmers were exporting carcasses in violation of anti-BSE guidelines. Many of the livestock slaughtered on the continent had been moved illegally within Britain and then to the continent, thereby complicating efforts to track the epidemic. And the European Union's Common Agricultural Policy stands accused of subsidising over-production and intensification.
Where will the crisis end? The mass slaughter and burning of livestock seems more symbolic than scientific. In the village of Lockerbie, scene of the Pan-Am disaster, the local farm began burning the corpses of hundreds of sheep at the stroke of midnight; it was as much a primitive form of sacrifice as an attempt to eradicate disease. Indeed, the killing of animals suspected of carrying a virus that is not lethal and from which they eventually recover, led former film star Brigitte Bardot to call off her crusade in defence of Bucharest's stray dogs so that she could defend the ewes, lambs, sows and cows being rounded up and massacred. Vaccination, however, is seen as impracticable, given the sheer number of animals and the variety of virus strains. But even if the present culling puts a halt to the present outbreak, it is no protection from another one, which the current infrastructure will help propagate.
In another time or place, this kind of crisis would have overthrown those in power. But with barely one per cent of the British working population engaged in agriculture, the political fall-out is limited. And beef imported from Argentina keeps British consumers happy. Meanwhile, press and opinion polls applauded this week's budget, as Gordon Brown's largesse appealed to the individualistic instincts of the electorate. New Labour seems to have the May elections all wrapped up, but foot-and-mouth may yet postpone the second term which Tony Blair so craves.
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Meat for thought 8 - 14 March 2001
The madness within 14 - 20 December 2000
Mad cows and Englishmen 4 - 10 November 1999
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