BY SOME strange coincidence at the same time that I wrote about sheep dipping and all that It involved, the perils of organophosphorus jumped into the news on the farming front. In fact, and I am indebted to a good friend for putting me in the picture, the OP saga was even written about in Private Eye.

The report reminded us that in the years 1976 to 1992, the old MAFF declared it compulsory for farmers to treat their sheep for scab and other parasites using the highly toxic pesticide organophosphorus (OP). Although it was well known that OPs could cause chronic damage due to the cumulative effect of being exposed to these chemicals.

The Government must have realised the disaster it was causing as a good many people died after using OP type sheep dips while a great many more had their lives and livelihoods ruined.

Mrs Brenda Sutcliffe of Sheep Farm, near Burnley, whose husband was afflicted to the extent that he was obliged to give up farming himself and needed a great deal of care and attention, knows all about the problems caused by OPs. This farmer’s wife has done a great deal of work on OPs and how they can affect human beings. The good lady has amassed a great deal of detail which I understand she has sent to civil servants and ministers who offered sympathy but little else. But this year Brenda Sutcliffe was getting through to Michael Meacher who had started to take notice before moving to another job. His successor does not appear to be carrying on what Michael Meacher had started.

As Private Eye puts it, somewhere along the line it became a top priority of MAFF (or as they call them “the Mafia”) and the department of health to hush it all up by making sure no minister or civil servant ever admitted in public that OPs could cause chronic damage.

They had quickly realised that, besides the fact that they had made using the chemicals compulsory, they had also been licensed as safe to use by the Government’s own veterinary medicines directorate (VMD).

If an official admission was forthcoming that the chemicals were responsible for damaging human health it could inevitably lead to compensation claims, not only against drug companies, but also against the Government itself.

The Government must have gone into a cold sweat on learning that, in 1997, a well-known multinational pharmaceutical company was successfully sued for OP damage in Hong Kong. The damages came to £1.9 million.

Due to evidence that the mixing of OP with phenols in the sheep dip was doing irreparable damage. Minister of Agriculture at the time John Selwyn Gummer ended compulsory dipping, but he did that without disclosing the real reason.

Although you could often hear the splash of sheep being dipped, there was an almighty hush from the meeting rooms of MAFF’s veterinary products committee. Likewise from the Department of Health’s committee on toxicity of chemicals, but this surely could not be because some of its members have close connections with pharmaceutical firms, could it? You know me, I only ask the questions.

To cap it all, the meeting that was to have taken place in December of all interested parties in OPs has been cancelled by DEFRA’s brand new minister, Ben Bradshaw. He says there is nothing much new to report. Well, he would say that wouldn’t he? Even I know there is a deal of fresh material ready to come forward and I’m retired.

If we see the emergence of a new dip, do you suppose they might call it HUSH?

Dialect word: Daup, meaning carrion crow.

Thought for the day: Arthritis is nothing more than twinges in the hinges.