AS THOUSANDS of animals suspected of having foot and mouth disease burn on
pyres across Britain, public outrage is focusing on the intensive farming
methods used to produce meat. But what鈥檚 needed to prevent such outbreaks may be
more intensive farming, not less, researchers say.
Britain鈥檚 foot and mouth outbreak started on a small farm that collected sows
past breeding age from different farms, fattened them up and sold them for
low-value meat. They were fed on swill鈥攍eftovers from food factories,
schools and hospitals. By law, the swill should have been boiled first. The
outbreak may have been caused by infected swill that wasn鈥檛 boiled, says Gareth
Davies, former head epidemiologist at the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and
Food (MAFF).
There could now be calls for swill to be banned, or at least boiled at a feed
plant, he says. This will hurt smaller farmers. 鈥淏ut it is on those farms that
these outbreaks start, not the big intensive farms,鈥� says Aalt Dijkhuizen,
former head of animal health economics at the Dutch agricultural university in
Wageningen. Regions where the disease is endemic, such as much of Asia, are
dominated by small farms.
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Animals on bigger, more self-sufficient farms are less likely to encounter
infected animals or vehicles from other farms. The virus has been spreading
across Britain since early February, but has so far spared the huge pig barns of
Yorkshire and Norfolk.
And while the virus has been spread mainly by sheep bought at one market
being sold at another across the country within days, Davies says this is
neither new nor necessarily related to intensive farming. MAFF knew this
practice was risky and tried to stop it in the 1980s, he says, but the legal
issues turned out to be too tricky.
Bigger farms are also more likely to have a vet. 鈥淎 cash-strapped farmer cuts
veterinary care first,鈥� claims Tony Little, vice-president of the British
Veterinary Association. That allowed the current outbreak to spread as far as it
did, before it was spotted by a vet at an abattoir. The farmer says he noticed
nothing, and didn鈥檛 have a regular vet.
MAFF called for more active veterinary surveillance on farms in a report
published last November. One way to get it, says Little, may be schemes under
which a farm can charge more for produce if it meets certain standards, such as
providing regular veterinary care. This, too, is more economic on large farms
where a vet can see more animals on each visit.
But while outbreaks may start more often on small farms, they do most damage
when they reach the big ones, says Dijkhuizen. Strict hygiene on all farms would
limit the damage, but farmers are unlikely to pay for this as long as the costs
of major epidemics are mainly borne by governments.
Dutch farming unions now favour mandatory insurance to cover the costs of
outbreaks, with lower premiums for farmers who take precautions, says
Dijkhuizen. A British government committee will this month recommend making it
compulsory for farmers to insure livestock against disease. Again, smaller farms
will have the most trouble paying the bill.