We are all to blame for foot and mouth

Point 1: We in the majority of the UK do not know the facts well enough to enter an informed discussion, since we only hear what the media/government/other interested parties want us to hear

Point 2: We are ALL responsible for the problem. It is our country, they are our farmers, and they are our animals. If a disease hits one part of our community, the knock-on effects run right throughout the whole community. If the farmers have been feeding the animals badly, transporting them too far, or any of the other issues heaped on the farmers' shoulders, it is because we, as a society, have demanded cheap food, and the farmers' actions have been a response to the demand.

Point 3: Foot and Mouth is extremely infectious. This includes wind borne transmission, especially when infected animals are burnt in the open. As a result, this disposal method (unlike that selected in 1967) is probably contributing to the spread of the disease. If you want someone to blame, you could say it is the European Community, which forbids the burial of carcases, but the ruling is based on sense. If you bury enough infected carcases, they will eventually infect subterranean water, and then disease can emerge miles away from its source and potentially continue to do so for as long as the bodies decompose.

Point 4: Foot and mouth is not a fatal disease in the majority of cases. The animals will recover and since it is a disease that specialises in attacking cloven-hoofed animals, it will not greatly affect the human species. It's a bit like a bad dose of the 'flu to the animals they feel unwell for a period and then recover to full health. At the same time they become resistant to the disease and may be able to pass that resistance onto their offspring. Killing them before they recover is destroying any breed-wide resistance to the disease, which is the exact opposite of what nature intended. If we destroy resistance in the flocks and herds by mass killings, we make the remaining animals less resistant.

Point 5: Mass slaughter was tried in other countries and has been seen not to work. In the initial stages of the disease spread, the slaughter is small-scale and quick, and disposal of the bodies is relatively simple. Scaling this operation to cover all UK flocks and herds requires hundreds of vets, slaughtermen, disposal operatives and others. The government cannot bring this kind of effort to bear, since firstly it doesn't have the manpower, and secondly, it would create mass panic What the government has attempted to do is mass slaughter without mobilising the resources to do it efficiently.

On a purely personal basis, I don't believe any government, Tory, Lib, or any other persuasion, would have done much different or better.

Point 6: All this means is that we as a country must make a choice: Either we accept the disease, perhaps inoculate against it, but largely tolerate it as inevitable, or we take the same approach as has been taken with rabies, and totally restrict all livestock movements into, out of, and inside the UK, and apply the same restrictions to carcasses, etc.

Remember, if you push a system hard enough, for long enough, it will eventually break. If by the time it breaks, you have become dependant upon the system performing to its extreme limits, then you will inevitably be damaged by the system's failure. It is nothing more than good engineering to run a system below its maintainable limits. That is simple experience gained from mechanical and electrical systems but equally applicable to the incredibly complex system that is the food chain.

Don't mess with Mother Nature, She's bigger than you!

J.R.Blake Flackwell Heath