Are we facing another horrific bovine slaughter?

Britain has been hit with another outbreak of foot and mouth disease, this time currently localised at a farm in Surrey and 60 affected cows have been humanely destroyed.

But if..and one can only hope this doesn't happen..the disease spreads, what is the policy to be? The last time Britain had an outbreak of the disease in 2001, vets slaughtered nearly ten MILLION cattle and the loss to the country was in the region of £8.5 billion in lost trade and owner compensation.

Many agricultural scientists say this policy is ridiculous and the scenes 5 years ago of mass burnings of cattle corpses were truly horrific.



Burning of cattle corpses at a government cremation site in Kilbride, Scotland





Why do we do it when there is the option of bovine inoculation? Because Britain's National Farmers Union, have long resisted the inoculation programme. This is because Britain's farmers receive good compensation for slaughtered animals and because they cannot sell the beef or milk of any cow which has been inoculated against foot and mouth disease.

Britain is almost alone in not inoculating cattle within a certain radius of an infected farm and we have been accused, rightly in my view, of allowing animal cruelty on a mass scale with the hideous slaughter of perfectly healthy animals. Our European partners inoculate in this limited way, why can't we?

Because it appears our farmers are putting economic considerations ahead of any animal welfare ones and that they are quite content to allow thousands of healthy animals in a foot and mouth infected area to be slaughtered needlessly. Surely there is a better way.