Today we burn the past. How can the future be different?

Mass slaughter is too appalling, vaccination too expensive. Anthony Browne looks at the alternative

Special report: Foot and mouth disease
Special report: the countryside in crisis

Anthony Browne
The Observer, Sunday March 4 2001

Tom Fox has been farming pigs for 40 years, but only a year ago did he see the future. Pig prices were low, and being driven down further by the supermarkets; his farm in Warwickshire was becoming uneconomic, and he thought he would have to give up. But rather than be a victim of the industrialisation of agriculture, he decided to do something radical: breed high-quality pigs that customers wanted, and sell direct to them.

He has a herd of 50 breeding sows that are a cross-breed between wild boar and Gloucester spot. His pigs are housed without crates, without stalls, and with plenty of straw. 'They take one or two months longer to grow, but it shows in the taste. We make them into a rather nice sausage, and dry cured bacon,' he said. A few times a week, he or one of his helpers takes their produce and sells it direct to the public through a farmers' market, cutting out the supermarkets and meat traders.

'The public like buying the meat from us and seeing the farmer - they know it's fresh and hasn't come from South Africa or Canada,' he said.

Farmers like Fox are now being held up as shining examples in an industry that, after 50 years of industrialisation and mass production, has in the past week come under unprecedented assault from every direction.

The outbreak of foot and mouth disease across the country - like BSE, salmonella, swine fever and E. coli - is now widely seen as a symptom of the industrialisation of agriculture. The mass transit of animals - both across Britain from farms to centralised abattoirs and across national borders - has spread the disease further and faster than before. But the industrialisation of agriculture is also responsible for the extreme slaughter policy for a disease that is rarely fatal to animals and harmless to humans. Even farmer groups admit the policy is simply the result of the drive for higher productivity and lower costs.

With Britain largely closed down by the crisis, the demand for more natural methods of food production - usually confined to the margins - have reached such a crescendo that the Prime Minister has been forced to add his voice. In an unprecedented move, Tony Blair promised to 'work out the basis on which we want sustainable agriculture for the long term'. Tony Juniper, policy director of Friends of the Earth, gloated: 'Thank goodness the penny has finally dropped, and Tony Blair himself has joined the debate.'

The policy of confinement and mass slaughter has now closed Britain down more effectively than floods, hurricanes and fuel protests. First it was the transport of animals that was banned. But within a week the nation's forests, national parks, National Trust houses, RSPB reserves and several royal parks have all closed to the public. Horse racing, hunting, the Crufts dog show, and the Countryside Alliance march have all been banned or postponed.

Walking on a footpath has become a criminal offence, with fines of up to £5,000. The national census - the 10-yearly population count due at the end of April - may be postponed for reasons other than war for the first time ever. Even the general election may have to be put back.

The Government has also warned that it has considered killing off much of Britain's wildlife - such as deer and wild boar, hedgehogs and foxes - as well as many of the animals kept in zoos.

But none of this need be. It is just that the alternatives - letting the disease run its course or vaccinating animals - either cost more for farmers or damages their productivity. Foot and mouth kills only frail animals, with almost all recovering in a few weeks. There is no risk to human health from meat carrying the virus. But the animals would lose their appetite and lose weight, and so would be worth less.

Ian Campbell of the National Pig Association said: 'You would hit their growth capabilities. You have a relatively short production cycle in pigs - they are born and eaten within five and a half months. If they have foot and mouth disease, then they would need another month or two months. You would severely damage the economics of it.'

One former Cabinet Minister argued that the disease could be tolerated in Britain, as it is in some other countries: 'It's a disease that doesn't affect humans, and it kills only a small proportion of animals, and hurts fertility and lowers production. We could have it endemic, and all it would do is affect profits slightly.'

The alternative - until recently favoured in Europe - is to vaccinate the animals, which the Government yesterday said it was now considering. Recent advances in vaccines mean they are now very effective and could wipe out the symptoms of the disease, if not the disease itself. 'You either vaccinate or stamp it out,' said Chris Bostok, director of the Institute for Animal Health. 'But vaccines are very short-lived - you need to revaccinate them every six months or so.'

This would prove expensive, particularly for farmers who would have to pay for the vaccination themselves, but get the taxpayer to compensate them if they slaughter the animals. 'It's very expensive to vaccinate. If Britain has unthrifty animals, we won't compete well,' said David Tyson, president of the British Veterinary Association.

'Vaccination is complex, balancing political issues rather than scientific ones - you're balancing costs with benefits,' said Bostok. A government cost benefit analysis in 1986 showed that the cost of vaccination exceeded the worst case scenario cost of eradication.

But the biggest problem with vaccination is that Britain has persuaded the rest of Europe to abandon it. Until the early Nineties, European countries such as France and Germany used routinely to vaccinate. But the completion of the single market required a level playing field, and any country that harbours foot and mouth - whether it vaccinates or not - cannot export meat. Stephen Rossides, head of food, health and science at the National Farmers Union, said: 'If you don't slaughter, you won't be able to export. Once you vaccinate, you lose your disease-free status, which has severe economic impact.'

Abigail Woods, who is researching foot and mouth disease at Manchester University, said: 'The need to get rid of the disease is the result of the intensification of agriculture, which is based on improving productivity. If we hadn't spent the last 50 years moving to global foot and mouth eradication, it would be easier to go back.'

In a dramatic concession to the hard-line eradication policy, Nick Brown yesterday admitted that, if the outbreak got much worse, Britain might have to go down the vaccination route. The cost of killing Britain's livestock and wildlife would be too high.

The statement was a sign of just how deeply the Government was rethinking its commitment to the cheap food policy that has prevailed since the Second World War, largely through the subsidies dished out by the Common Agricultural Policy.

Juniper said: 'Farmers have suffered disaster after disaster in the last 20 years, and incomes are at rock bottom. People have lost confidence in the way their food is produced. Much of our wildlife is gone, and rural landscapes impoverished. We cannot continue like this.'

Patrick Holden, director of the Soil Association, which upholds standards in organic farming in the UK, is optimistic that at last there will be radical reform. 'The conditions exist for the right kind of reform. We need to see agriculture in terms of its impact on rural employment, the environment, and public health,' he said.

At present, only 3 per cent of Britain's farmland is organic. Environmental groups are calling on the Chancellor to introduce a 'pesticides tax', which he first mooted several years ago, but has failed to introduce.

Organic livestock farmers practise 'clean grazing' so they don't have to drench their animals in chemicals to kill off parasites. Instead they use the techniques of a hundred years ago, grazing sheep and cows on alternate years on a particular patch of grass to break the parasites' lifecycle. 'Pests and parasites are a sign that husbandry is poor. Instead of trying to suppress these things, you should change your practices,' said Holden.

The organic movement also wants to promote local production and local consumption. 'We should have a county-by-county, food-first policy so that it would be a matter of pride that every part of Britain supports the farmers and products of that place,' said Holden. This would lead to shorter distribution times, and would also change the nature of the British landscape.

But this largely depends on how much the public wants it. Almost two thirds of organic food is bought by just 7 per cent of shoppers. A return to more natural methods will almost certainly mean higher prices in shops, but savings for taxpayers in terms of subsidising and compensating farmers. For the poor - who pay little tax but benefit from cheaper food - this may not seem an attractive option.

anthony.browne@observer.co.uk