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Self-Sufficiency in Style

stop the world?

part two

In part one, we brought you up to the start of Britain's Swine Fever Epidemic and made some startling claims about its significance.

We now move back again in time and bring in some information that was well known in veterinary circles but which has been constantly denied and covered up since.

Many of the animal health problems that have culminated in the Foot and Mouth disaster actually originated in the Americas. In fact, almost every part of the world contributed something, almost everywhere will suffer.

Britain is merely the cockpit where the coming together of many factors was mishandled.

The writer is not an expert in pig husbandry, but looking back it is surprising just how much I did know, without realising it.

East Anglia has become the centre, with East Yorkshire, of the British pig industry.

Originally as these important grain producing areas mechanised, the redundant small buildings became used for pigs - and why not - as a sensible use of facilities no longer needed.

Some became separated from the parent large farms with just an acre or two. Some became smallholdings, others small pig units.

East Anglia - the stage for a tragedy.

Not everything was as good as it looked.

The livestock hauliers were also small pig farmers, the next door neighbour was in pigs, and when we were thinking of buying a new home, the attached pig housing was investigated as a possible source of income.

One way or another, over the years, I had visited quite a lot of pig units both indoors and out. All looked after their pigs well, something that was to mislead me for a long time afterwards. 

Not everything was as good as it looked. There were bad farmers too hidden away - the typical dregs of the countryside, dirty, cruel and a torment to their neighbours.

Unseen, unrecognised by the world outside, the big multinationals were there in strength too. Together, the bad and the big unleashed a disaster of unprecedented scale and ferocity, but it was the big that framed the bad for the results.

They have mostly all now gone, clutching their money. The respectable, although often outwitted, remain to try to pick up the pieces. A few of the rogues remain desperately trying to continue the cover-up.

I could not understand why so many people should tell so many quite obvious lies to the press, to the public, to enquiries, to everyone.

Many people were simply not interested enough to crosscheck, most did not possess the specialist knowledge in some esoteric fields to notice the flaws in the stories. I did and I'm not going to allow false modesty to cloud the issue.

They had not been threatened in their homes and have the cold fury to be determined to get to the bottom of what is one of the biggest scandals ever to hit the Western world.

...most of the people, most of the time.

The Canadian Connections.

It did not. The pigs were already sick from other diseases. They are still sick. There are complex and little understood relationships between Swine Fever, which is not thought to endanger humans, and others like Salmonella, which do. This will be covered in detail later.

They were desperate to hide the fact that the farms that got Swine Fever already had other pig health problems. Pigs had died in large numbers and were being slaughtered and buried secretly on the farms. They probably still are.

Some of these diseases are thought to have been introduced to Britain, by accident from Canada some years ago. The whole question of how these diseases move around the world is going to be tackled later - but it is not infected meat imports - that is for sure.

It might be Canada for one disease, other places for others. It is how we stop disease spreading that really matters and Britain has lied to the world about the method of importation.

Canada crops up many times, in different roles, in this story.

The first group were all owned by the same company. Not the farms, which threw everyone off the scent, but the actual pigs. They were moving their pigs between "boarding houses" owned by different farmers on a complex pyramid system.

This system, I believe, had originated in the US. It has now been substantially modified, but at that time it was a recipe for total disaster once infection became established.

Instead of telling us how the disease was being spread, they hid the relationship and insisted that small farmers were smuggling pigs around the countryside. They blamed everything from seagulls to foxes, from livestock hauliers to pet pig owners. They were lying and they knew it.

Embarrassingly, the local government people, recruited to help the government vets terrorise the countryside into submission, slipped up and caught a multinational moving pigs during the movement ban.

The case went to Court and the big boys having been caught red-handed, were heavily fined. They left the industry with the speed of light.

The foxes here were human.

No movement for pigs.

The first vets to actually enter were pleasant enough, a look across the fence at healthy sow and piglets, a reminder that we were not allowed to move them and they were off.

We were actually, with others, the most severely affected animal owner in the whole of the Britain by movement restrictions in the combined Swine Fever/ Foot and Mouth epidemics. The four young pigs had been due to move the day after Swine Fever was identified and all movements were stopped.

The vets, although, disorganised, were mostly pleasant and relaxed. There were no arbitrary demands to inspect the records. We chatted across the gate, as we confirmed that we had pigs or gave them directions. Life on a smallholding can be very quiet and we perhaps enjoyed the diversion.

One apologised for the confusion, "If you put a vet in charge of anything - you always get chaos." Another told of the confusion back at base and confirmed that they did not know where the pig farms actually were.

Another told me "Don't worry, this disease, unlike Foot and Mouth is almost always pig to pig. I'm not saying that it could not be carried in muck on a bird's foot, but it is very unlikely."

We didn't worry, we knew that our pigs had been isolated  for many months from any others. The offspring had known no pig except "Vera" their mother.

But his comment remained in our mind. Despite the desperate attempt to persuade the world otherwise later, this man had been speaking the truth -"pig to pig" - that is the way Swine Fever almost always spreads.

Halcyon days.

A minor flow of exports was put above animal welfare.

The government wanted the sick pigs to be culled, the pig owners wanted the same, with generous compensation, of course. No voice was raised in protest. A cull was necessary to safeguard the export market and because of European rules - this explanation will come back to haunt Britain.

The fact that the pigs were sick and devalued before swine fever and that the taxpayer was paying over the odds in compensation was conveniently forgotten.

The taxpayer never knew. I'm telling them now, having already told the European Union auditors and requested their protection from persecution by the British government. This is not something we did lightly, but we are not going to accept being threatened in our own home by crooks.

Most pigs, even at the early stages, did not actually have Swine Fever, but they had been in contact with those that had. Later, even those that had been nowhere near swine fever were also killed.

The only dispute was how much was to be paid.

Some cameras legally being used from the highway were banned by the police, there was a row.

The Minister of Agriculture, Nick Brown, was showing great reluctance to become personally involved. He was not to make the one hour journey from London for some three months despite the horrific scenes on local television each night.

Even then he arrived in secret, held a rushed meeting and departed quickly. It was a momentous visit about which there will be more later.

During this period despite mounting public pressure, he remained firmly at his desk in London and saying as little as possible. He is still a member of the Cabinet despite his old department being abolished in disgrace. Clearly the Prime Minister, Tony Blair does not blame Mr Brown for Swine Fever or Foot and Mouth.

Brown obviously knew there was something very bad happening and did not want to be too involved.

I now believe that because Prince Charles' business and personal associates were heavily involved, Brown decided to keep well out of the way. This may also explain the real reason why Prime Minister Blair gave evidence in secret to the Foot and Mouth enquiries - the man who promised us open government!

His Royal Highness does keep pigs, by the way, something that I had not realised until told by the media over a year later. In fact, he even sells his own "organic" sausages.

This involvement in agriculture by Britain's Royal family is nothing new. One of our kings had the nickname "Farmer George" - I'm not sure that their activities went as far as selling sausages though.

Americans will know this king by another name - George III.

A camera shy politician?

As always, please check my facts, you are not going to be asked to take much on trust. You can do most of it from your computer.

The East Anglian Daily Times is a good place to start. Search their archives, special reports. Their search engine is not too reliable - but you will pick up lots of information about the Swine Fever outbreak. You will see dozens of articles including the Minister of Agriculture's refusal to visit East Anglia and his explanations. The very generous donations by Prince Charles to help bankrupt farmers are also recorded there.

This publication plays a central role in the epidemic. Not all the information is reliable, some is fairly obvious spin, but what there is gives a clear idea what was being said in the press at the time. You will also see mention of John Gummer. 

Gummer was Britain's Minister of Agriculture during the preceding Mad Cow outbreak. Few in Britain will forget him feeding his young daughter a hamburger as a demonstration of the safety of British beef. He is the MP for much of the Swine Fever outbreak area.

You will also pick up the writer's first trivial public intervention. There will be much more to say about The East Anglian Daily Times later.

You can trace much about the Swine Fever Epidemic from http://www.pighealth.com/csf.htm  Not only the history of the epidemic is covered by a veterinarian, but crucially the condition of Britain's pigs before the outbreak began. The links from this site will take you into the world of pigs across the continents.

Those with a scientific bent will quickly spot some discrepancies between some of the newspaper reports in The East Anglian Daily Times and the serious veterinary sources. This is only to be expected, of course, but with what we now know, it is quite clear that the provincial press are being fed an inaccurate line - deliberately.

In particular, PDNS and PMWS are a productive field of study.

All this was yet to come, of course, all we knew in the early days of Swine Fever, was that something was going very wrong.

The first blood test on our sow was taken in late August.

The government vet, who seemed a nice enough fellow, was competent enough.

"Have you ever seen a blood test taken from a pig before?"

We said that we hadn't.

"It is not very nice, it is better that the public do not know," he said.

That was prophetic, there was a lot that they did not intend to tell the public.

The story is continued on Stop the World - Part Three

much more to come soon - some will rock Canada

from

 the appropriately  named Hangman's Cottage, just to the south of Misery Corner.