[pf] Fw: Foot-and-Mouth crisis and modern agriculture (AFP- Agence Franc

· #1 of 2. I'm posting this to the Positive Futures list in spite of
objections about all the negative posts here, because I see knowledge of
the mistakes we have (and particularly the US has) made in recent decades
as _essential_ for moving away from the current track /towards/ a Positive
Future.  D.

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At 23:54 2/3/2001 +1300, David Parker sent to: GreenViews NZ, with Subject:
[GV]Fwd: F&M crisis and modern agriculture (AFP) :-

Foot-and-Mouth Crisis Points Finger at Modern Agriculture Industry

Published on Thursday, March 1, 2001 by Agence France Presse

LONDON - The wildfire spread of Britain's foot-and-mouth outbreak has been
accelerated by modern animal husbandry practices and the globalisation of
the agriculture industry, experts said Wednesday.

Intensive farming, agricultural efficiency and a livestock life cycle that
often requires long-distance transportation of live creatures has increased
the rapid dispersion of the highly infectious virus currently ravaging some
30 sites in Britain and Northern Ireland, they said.

Some experts and politicians even expressed hopes that the current nine-day
crisis, which has brought British farming to a standstill, could provoke a
radical rethink in the big-is-beautiful methods of modern agri-business.

"The only good thing that could have come out of this is that the British
government which has been deeply committed to the
efficiency-intensification model of agriculture might now begin to question
that," said Tim Lang, professor of food policy at Thames Valley University.

"What we have done is create an agricultural desert of big intensive
farming," Lang told AFP. "Bigger companies bigger farms, more pressure on
farmers to produce more for less -- all of this has contributed to the
rapid dispersion of the virus."

The agriculture business has undergone radical change in the past
generation, due to the demand for ever cheaper food and the acceleration of
the single European market and international trade.

The days are long gone when local farmers reared livestock for slaughter at
rural abattoirs to supply food retailers in the region.

In the past 10 years, the number of farms in Britain has dwindled by 25
percent to some 160,000. Now animals can travel hundreds of miles from farm
to market to farm to holding centre to farm before making the final,
usually lengthy, journey to abattoir.

All of which makes it far easier for beasts to contract contagious ailments
-- and far harder to check the spread of disease once it takes root.

Politicians have called for an EU-wide shake-up of intensive farming
methods as a result of the crisis. Some are concerned in particular over
the closure of rural abattoirs which find it hard to compete economically.

"It is a commitment in the Rural White Paper that we will stop the closure
of small abattoirs and that is very important," said British agriculture
minister Michael Meacher. "On the question of intensive farming, we do need
a full scale review."

Conservative MP Damian Green added: "Animals are clearly being transported
huge distances in ways that didn't happen in (a previous) 1967 outbreak.

"The effects are now going all over the country much faster, so we do need
to look at how we regulate, and the costs the Government imposes on small
slaughterhouses," he added.

Some experts are more pragmatic however about the pros and cons of modern
agricultural methods.

"It is clear that because of the transportation of animals we help spread
the disease," said Francois Ortalo-Magne, a lecturer at the London School
of Economics.

"If we lived in a world where we each produced in our own back yard what we
eat, we would have less chance of diseases spreading. Would this be a
happier world? I don't think so," he said.

"Consumers demand cheap food, we have a system which produces cheap food...
but a lot of these foods that industry produce are much cleaner and safer
than organic farming," Ortalo-Magne told AFP.

In the meantime, the foot-and-mouth outbreak looks certain to spread to
continental Europe and Ireland -- and scientists believe many other
countries could be affected.

They say the outbreak is a particularly virulent strain from Asia which
reached Europe in 1996.

"There are probably many more countries that are affected, but haven't
bothered to report it," said Alex Donaldson, head of the Institute for
Animal Health at Pirbright, Surrey, a leading lab researching
foot-and-mouth, in an interview with the New Scientist magazine.

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sent on by David.
(David MacClement) davd@ihug.co.nz 
http://www.geocities.com/davdd.geo/index.html#top
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