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The foot-and-mouth epidemic is horrible; my heart just breaks. Apparently there exists a vaccine which is for two reasons is not used: first, until now it has been cheaper to slaughter affected animals than to vaccinate all. Second, and more subtly, there is no way to distinguish between a vaccinated animal and an animal which has been infected in the past, and nations needed to be able to sell animals to foot-and-mouth free countries. Wien van den Brink, chairman of the Dutch Union of Pig Farmers, very eloquently summed up farmers’ abhorrence:
It is unbelievable that in the 21st century an outbreak of a contagious disease for which there is a vaccine totally shatters a society. When there is an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease, we fall back on the methods of the Middle Ages. Animals are treated as mere dirt. They are killed, thrown on heaps and burnt or destroyed. To be in favour of this policy shows the deepest contempt for animals . . . I am ashamed to be part of the Western society which permits this.
I also.
It seems impossible not to have one’s heart break for the affected families. For instance, the pain of ten-year-old Lottie Jones in Wales who has to endure the slaughter of the Jones’ 228 dairy cows, all of whom she knew by name. Lottie had spent at least two hours a day with the cows since she was a baby. And she cannot be comforted by her parents since she has been sent to a neighboring farm, by special permit, and cannot return to the quarantined Jones farm for three weeks. Mr. and Mrs. Jones were not even allowed to hug or kiss her goodbye, and instead sat in their living room crying, trying to play music loudly enough to drown out the sounds of the massacre of the herd, a herd started by Mr. Jones’ grandfather eighty years ago.
“I don’t yet know whether this is going to be character-building or soul-destroying,” says Mrs. Jones. Probably some of each. But perhaps ideally this horror will help construct a new generation who will not stand for such barbaric practices as preferring death to immunization, practices which require, but are not limited to, shooting in the head cows who love and are loved by little girls.
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