Foot And Mouth

BBC news is leading with it what about sky ?

For Info:

Firstly, it's Foot and Mouth. Might want to edit the title.

Secondly, remember a character from Dad's Army? 'Don't panic, don't panic'.

It was a bit pointless of News 24 to start the 10 o clock hour with the Ten, then opt out after the top story. They should have gone it alone from the start.

FOOT AND MOUTH!!! not MONTH!

Dermot didn't look happy finishing that bulletin! Some could think it was rather hectic and the timing didn't work out.

The cut to the Ten I think was deliberate with the DEFRA spokesman being lined up for the Ten so getting that on air on N24 was good despite the cut away and back. I think it's worked well.

ITV Teletext is already demonstrating its Associated Newspapers ownership, with its Tele-texts page blaming immigration and meat imports as a possible cause of the latest outbreak.

So the Polish immigrants somehow brought infected sheep on the boats and planes with them? Would they be wrapped up in bags, or put in glasses and disguised as their grandmother?

That'd look interesting going through Customs and Excise.

"Do you have anything to declare, sir?"

"Yes. Two suitcases of clothes, three alarm clocks, one bicycle and a sheep infected with foot and mouth."

To be more precise, one reader suggests terrorists brought it in through the Chunnel. Another cites lax border controls for two outbreaks within six years after 34 disease-free years.

Meanwhile, the government may be on the PR offensive but have TV folk learned any lessons? Every time we see Tim Willcocks on News 24 there are an increasing number of bodies in the background - not officials but TV crew and press with cameras. If this spreads, the same people would inevitably report from any secondary locations and these reporters may well end up exacerbating a problem without even trying. After all, it was suggested the last outbreak was spread by the same government vets moving around the country...

I don't think that was ever seriously entertained as a possibility. One of the key factors behind the rapid spread of the disease around the country during the last outbreak was the government's total failure to effectively respond to the situation quickly enough in the first place, particularly in regard to the lengthy delay in halting the movement of cattle around the country.

Government vets might well have been cited as an additional factor in the spreading of the disease, but singling them out as the cause - and trying to extend that blame to journalists - is as unfair as it is ignorant.

Why is it ignorant? It's already been established that F&M can be a wind-borne virus, so it is quite capable of transporting itself on the vehicles or even the clothing of people moving around. Not to mention the scores of "F&M" tourists who ignored farmers' pleas and travelled to farms to see the piles of dead cattle (and any farmer who challenged these ghouls would often get nutted for his trouble).

And while the government indeed was slow to act last time, who's to say Gordon Brown's response was more about PR? Let's face it, F&M containment is less about animal welfare but more to do with safeguarding the economy. We know that animals with F&M rarely die, but are rendered useless for food production - we can't have that can we? Our lust for cheap supermarket meat has put us in this position.

It's ignorant for the very reasons I've already stated. Your assertion that government vets were to blame for the spread of the disease was well wide of the mark - it may well have been a minor contributing factor, but as I've already stated, and as is widely accepted, it was not the movement of government vets, but the government's initial failure to act properly to deal with the crisis, particularly in allowing the movement of cattle around the country for days after the first cases were discovered.

The fairly substantial exclusion zones placed around infected farms and the strict controls for entry and egress from infected areas once the government eventually acted more decisively massively limited the significance of any human spread of the disease.

The facts are widely available and speak for themselves. Choosing to overlook those facts in favour of painting a different picture of events is unfair to those involved and ignorant.

Your points about humanity's lust for cheaper meat and the decisions behind culling may have merit but they are entirely irrelevant to the point of discussion about the spread of the disease.