The livestock funeral pyres continue to burn as the foot and mouth plague continues its inexorable march across the British countryside and now into mainland Europe. Over two hundred and forty cases identified and about 180,000 livestock incinerated so far as UK farmers stare bankruptcy in the face and related sectors face financial pressure.
Enter the British government.
The State here in Britain has had a long love affair with the farming sector or, to be more precise, price controls and subsidies have propped up an industry which has never been allowed to face the ruthless probings of free market forces. For ever since the Nazi U-boats threatened to starve Britain of imports, guaranteed food production has been a shibboleth to the State.
Also add to this the socialist forces of the European Union's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) with their rancid butter mountains and vinegarated wine lakes eating up a huge portion of the EU budget. But for once CAP plays no major part in this epidemic (though one could wax lyrical about their ridiculous policies of price support, interventionism, and export/import tariffs).
The truth is that State intervention has turned this into an economic plague as well, for the British government has guaranteed to pay compensation to every farmer for every animal slaughtered. The promise of this payment can only lead to one thing – the guaranteed slaughter of the animals as farmers look for a financial escape exit.
The Real World
If the farmers were pushed into the real world and out of the fantasy world of State welfare payments, then how would things work out differently?
The truth is that foot and mouth, to the majority of healthy animals, is no worse than a bad dose of the flu, and they eventually recover. The problem to the farmer is that the fatted calf is now not so fatted and the time to market is lengthened and cash flow is threatened due to a static (but convalescing) inventory and the extra cost of animal feed.
Meanwhile, the farmer with a healthy stock comes in and takes the customer (normally the supermarkets) and our plagued farmer is found wanting by the free market. Welcome to the real world.
Without the safety net of government money, our unlucky farmer would have to sell his stock at rock bottom prices or sit it out until the plague runs it course. Since foot and mouth is a pretty rare event with only two other British outbreaks in the last 40 years, he should have considered taking insurance out against such an eventuality. That we take such a thing for granted in protecting other business assets seems lost on a sector which thinks it has a divine right to State protection in which the taxpayer pays both the insurance "premiums" and the compensation and gets nothing in return expect charred carcasses and increased meat prices at the counter.
The farming sector is in dire need of a free market shake-up. Pitiable stories of farmers dependent on EU subsidies and inconveniently high prices says only one thing – they should not be farmers at all but should sell their land to property developers and take up a life which is not causing a net loss to the economy. But, sadly, after the debacle of trying to prop up falling beef prices after the BSE scandal, it seems that nothing has been learnt at all by farmer nor government.
A question of freedom
But the other and more worrying aspect of all this panic is the flexing of the government's muscle in what they historically have been best at – interfering with the liberty of the people. At the last count, all Forestry Commission forests, national parks, and two-thirds of all public footpaths in the countryside had been closed by decree in an attempt to halt the progress of this disease.
What is wearily displayed before us here is the old phenomenon of State restriction allied with the new phenomenon of State obsession with a zero-risk society. One could detail further the ban on certain sports meetings such as horse-racing, zoos being closed and other public assemblies to get the draconian picture and the economic penalty on those who have very little to do with pig farms in distant and isolated areas.
But the classic symptom of this paranoia must be the forced slaughter of animals which have been passed as healthy but whose crime was to be located within a mile of even a minor outbreak of foot and mouth. The government sees trouble where there is no trouble, where quarantine is sufficient, the government interferes to the extreme.
It is the old adage: "We must do something. This is something. Let's do it!" With a general election only a matter of months away and all those floating voters in rural areas watching to see how the government reacts, it is not too surprising to see how this zero-risk mania also applies to the short-term strategy of winning votes.
Personal responsibility
The bottom line is that very few urbanites could be carriers and it is doubtful as to the probability of them being near swine or bovine. Replacing the child-like treatment of the State with personal responsibility leads us to some conclusions.
Firstly, that every farmer is responsible for his own livestock assets and such self-interest should guarantee self-regulation and vigilance – staying away from the cattle markets until it blows over and taking the necessary disinfectant procedures.
Secondly, that other farmers who have an interest in knowing whose farms are infected will ensure that such farms are ostracised until they prove their fitness.
Thirdly, that those who can be proven to have wilfully spread the disease face the full force of litigation from their victims and are thus deterred.
But when one is treated like a child by the State, it is not surprising that one eventually begins to think like a child.
In conclusion, this minor plague will run its course but the devastation to cattle will be all the work of the State guaranteeing payments for pyres. To the god of State intervention has been sacrificed a monstrous burnt offering indeed.
March 16, 2001
Roland Watson writes from Scotland.
