Our wildest nightmare - it really is the British government who has infected their own country with Foot and Mouth Disease and is now taking it out on the farmers.
U.K. foot-and-mouth outbreak linked to lab LONDON - The strain of foot-and-mouth disease found on a farm in southern England was identical to one used at a nearby laboratory, Britain’s environment agency said Saturday.
The highly infectious disease was detected on a farm outside Wanborough, about 30 miles southwest of London. A nearby government-funded lab is researching vaccines for the virus.
Britain banned exports of livestock, meat and milk Saturday after the outbreak of highly infectious foot-and-mouth disease and halted the movement of cattle, sheep, goats and pigs nationwide in a bid to prevent the spread of the virus.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown vowed to work “night and day” to avoid a repeat of a 2001 epidemic when 7 million cattle were culled and the farming industry was devastated.
“Our first priority has been to act quickly and decisively,” said Brown, who returned to London from a summer holiday to deal with the outbreak. He chaired a meeting of the government’s crisis committee, COBRA, on Saturday.
“I can assure people … we are doing everything in our power to look at the scientific evidence and to get to the bottom of what has happened and then to eradicate this disease,” he said.
The government-funded Institute for Animal Health’s Pirbright Laboratory, which is researching the disease, is about four miles from the affected farm.
The government’s chief veterinarian, Debby Reynolds, ordered a new six-mile protection zone to be set up around the farm and the lab.
Britain’s top veterinary official said the virus was not one found in animals, and instead matched a strain being held at nearby disease-research and vaccine production facilities.
“This is a strain … that is contained in the Pirbright facility and is associated with vaccine production,” Reynolds told Sky News television. She said authorities were investigating biosecurity arrangements at the laboratory site.
-APNews
With help like this from our dearly beloved government and fearless leaders we will surely need NAIS, to protect us from the government… Is it time to being mandatory tagging and tracking of all government employees and politicians so that when there are disease outbreaks we can round them up for eradication in order to protect the rest of us from their disease generating, filthy habits? Something that has been often noted here and elsewhere is government employees, inspectors and what-not, are important disease vectors due to their moving about between farms, and labs, without following appropriate bio-security procedures. That is the most likely explanation for this outbreak - government incompetence.
Hat tip to many people.
We could surely save time, money and a lot of aggrevation by simply eradicating government employees and politicans BEFORE an outbreak, dontcha think?
Comment Patricia Hampton — August 5, 2007 @ 7:29 am
This all sounded familiar so I went back to research the England 2001 outbreak of hoof and mouth. In 2001 a vial of foot-and-mouth virus went missing from a government lab at Porton Down in Wiltshire two months before the crisis began.
The disappearance was discovered during a routine audit of the sensitive unit, which also houses smallpox, TB, anthrax and Ebola.
Another interesting twist:
Timber merchants say they were approached by the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food in early February to supply wood for pyres although the first cases of hoof and mouth weren’t confirmed until February 20th, 2001. Agriculture minister Nick Brown insisted this was part of a “regular contingency planning exercise”.
Hmmm….. “We’re here from the government and we are going to protect” really are scary words.
I also found some information on the vaccines. Supposedly there are six or so strains and the vaccines have to specific to the strain. A vaccination is given once and then six months later a booster is administered. The problem is that the treated animal isn’t stricken with hoof-and-mouth but can still be a carrier.
Seems to me that the $100 million spent on NAIS already would have been better spent on hoof-and-mouth research - especially since this is one of the reoccuring justifications for NAIS
Comment Mary Beth Westcott — August 5, 2007 @ 7:30 am
..”Is it time to being mandatory tagging and tracking of all government employees and politicians so that when there are disease outbreaks we can round them up for eradication in order to protect the rest of us from their disease generating, filthy habits?..”
Yes, yes, yes!!! I’ve been saying this since this NAIS disaster started. It is government and their big ag counterparts that need tracking, tagging and numbering, not the people.
They will be the fall of agriculture in this and any other country, not the small farmer.
Comment Kim P. — August 5, 2007 @ 7:43 am
Sort of like Lyme Disease.
U.S. government went off the coast to prevent diseases they were inventing from getting to people. They located the research facility in the Atlantic fly zone of migratory birds. The little town of Lyme has been ‘honored’ as the landing spot of our government’s incompetence.
I know a lot of government employees do a great job but the higher up you go the less they seem to have a grip on sanity and what the average person needs. We sure don’t need FDA,USDA pencil pushers spreading diseases around from farm to farm to see if farmers are registered.
Comment GORDON — August 5, 2007 @ 8:20 am
…been accused of putting my foot in my mouth before but I’ll go along with tagging government employees, ahem “public servants”, heck I’ll even go in every back yard to find them! If the tagging gun doesn’t work can we brand them ??
Anybody ever get a “micro chicken egg” ? Got one the other day no bigger than a Robins egg. Probably should have tried to hatch it out but didn’t think of it until too late. Maybe I’ll develope my own strain of “free range micro-chickens” come to think of it I’d better copy right that name before the USDA starts making rules for just what a free range micro chicken is…
[We’ve gotten the teeny-tiny eggs, smaller than the last joint of my thumb (1″) a few times. My understanding from reading is that they form around a foreign object in the bird’s reproductive tract much like an oyster making a pearl. -WJ]
Comment Bob Constantine — August 5, 2007 @ 7:12 pm
Actually, our wildest nightmare would be the government infecting our animals ON PURPOSE. At the moment, this appears to have been an accident. True, an accident that never should have happened. Because of their incompetence, the virus spread from the lab to the farm nearby. But it appears to be a result of pure incompetence, not malicious intent.
Of course, appearances can be deceiving.
Comment Goatman — August 5, 2007 @ 7:43 pm
It still isn’t clear yet how the infection was released from the lab–a joint Government lab/Animal Science Vaccine producing lab. Several options remain to speculate over: Terrorism by extremists (remember, the recent attacks on Glasgow and London were from Doctors no one would have suspected), terrorism by government, a new fangled way of selling more vaccine dreamt up by Merck, or just plain stupidity.
Speculation still exists from 2001 about where the missing vial of similar “vaccine related” FMD virus went to. We here in the States will do well to watch this unfold very carefully. . . .
Comment Podchef — August 5, 2007 @ 9:23 pm
One time is an accident 2 times is pure incompitance.
This lab holds deadly what evers, its obvious that the security and the Bio security is not what is cracked up to be. Just off New York isn’t there an island called Plum Island. Please read the book Lab 257
Comment Gisela — August 6, 2007 @ 12:50 am
We, in the USA, have been more fortunate than most realize that this has not happened to us. Plum Island has had 3 ‘accidents’ with FMD - that we know of! By the Grace of God, it never got off the island each time but….
Also, the above article leaves out the fact that an Merial Animal Health, owned by American pharmaceutical company Merck, is manufacturing FMD vaccine on this same site as the UK govt Pirbright Lab: http://www.cbc.ca/cp/world/070805/w080538A.html
I found this quote particularly unnerving:
“It may not be a huge security breach,” Pennington said. “It may just be one incident which let a puff of virus out.”
[Hmm… A little puff here, a little puff there… pretty soon you’ve got 7.1 million dead livestock when the government over reacts. Perhaps the government is puffing the wrong stuff behind closed doors…. -WJ]
Comment Karen — August 6, 2007 @ 1:16 pm
Plum Island is near long island. Lyme disease originated there and in all likelihood so did the west nile virus which started in NewYork and spread throughout the entire country. They were going to build a level four germ lab in Wisconsin, but people in Madison near where the lab was proposed to be built raised such a stink about it that it was sent south. I think either Texas or Mississippi wound up the “winners” in that particular government program..In my opinion a lab like that should be isolated on an Island far far away from civilization..
Comment Deb — August 6, 2007 @ 1:34 pm
Interesting reading the comments from the British on the BBC site.
BBC Comments
Comment Sue F — August 6, 2007 @ 2:31 pm
I bet Plum Island has had more. My dad used to work for Brookhaven Nat’l lab and when I was a rotten kid he used to threaten to drop me on Plum Island.That was in the 1970’s His comments never made sense to me until a few years ago. Now his strange pun makes sense.
Comment Sue F — August 6, 2007 @ 2:35 pm
No suprise here,govt is in the business of keeping a threat alive,even if only in a vial in some dusty lab.They have to justify their existence and to have a threat to release if the peasants get too restless.
I have been out of the loop for a few days so maybe this is old news,I have been reading the GAO report to Mr Harkin of the senate,it appears that GAO is siding up with the “Industry” to push USDA to make NAIS manditory,at least thats my take,we will have to keep after the senators to block NAIS as they will probably attemp to get their way with the farm bill as it comes up in the senate.There is a link to the GAO report on todays(8/10) Ecologic Powerhouse site,in case anyone want to download it,thanks!
“Live free,or die tryin”
Comment LEE — August 10, 2007 @ 4:41 pm
Plum Island has had its share of escapees. It has also had its share intentional releases. They were only warming up….
Locally, EM is requesting volunteers to pick up human dead bodies by this fall. Ummmm….
This was a top story of the same newspaper who won’t carry a story on the dangers of NAIS, even after three hours of looking over documents, they concluded it was a *conspiracy*.
Colorado, I would be a watchin’ CSU. You have some “interesting” folks there.
Pennsylvania-the documents reveal you best keep your eyes open too.
text
More to come…..
Comment Celeste — August 11, 2007 @ 9:27 pm
There are 4 articles of interest at APHIS’s homesite at USDA, currently re: 1.The American Angus Assn. 2. The Nat’l Milk Producers Fed. 3. FMD outbreak in England and 4.The Nat’l Pork Producers Assn. Interesting to read their info. Am glad to read that R-calf is sending a representative(Mr. Fox….what an appropriate last name..)to the ID-INFO EXPO to be held Aug. 28-30….this article is at www.cattlenetwork.com, dated aug. 22. I got this off of Americans Against Nais…(Gisela, maybe you will expand on this comment?)R-calf is addressing the impt. issues of USDA using 4-H, the breed registries,etc, with all these C.A.’s(with nice grants(?) of money…$400,00…$580,000..etc)and the seriousness of “registering your premise”..what it can really entail.
Comment The Phantom — August 23, 2007 @ 6:22 am
I think Kenny Fox is ok. If he is the same Kenny Fox from South Dakota, he is opposed to premise registration & animal id. From the article you site, he seems to be saying he will go to this meeting to get specific answers to his specific questions.
Comment donna — August 23, 2007 @ 12:49 pm
to #16 - Donna: I realize that it looked like I was saying something ???about Mr. Fox, but I was trying to be funny, and was thinking of him being “smart like a fox” to go to a meeting sponsored by NIAA…a meeting definitely pro-nais. I applaud his going, as you can always learn something. By the way, for any new viewers, go to www.freetofarm.com and read or reread Bruno Schmidt’s essays (2.p each)…(hit on updates to get to them) on nais. He really opens your eyes to what all the nais language means and tells you about things you would never have figured out. They do a good job on this at many of the anti nais websites, but his is also very, very good and informative.Like unraveling a mystery!
Comment The Phantom — August 23, 2007 @ 3:20 pm