Culling policy may have been in vain

that the controversial contiguous culling policy which saw millions of animals slaughtered may have been in vain.

Back in February, the European Parliament's temporary committee on foot-and-mouth began looking at the outbreak which devastated British agriculture and also reached Holland and France.

Its draft findings, published this week, say "It remains controversial and doubtful whether the 24/48 hour contiguous cull strategy was really responsible for curbing the epidemic."

The committee's draft report also says that suppressive vaccination might have been used instead of the 24/48 culling and that the presumption in EU policy against vaccination should be dropped in its present form.

It says: "Emergency vaccination with the aim of allowing animals to live for normal further use should no longer be regarded only as a last resort but must be considered as a first-choice option from the outset."

According to committee members, vaccination was not considered practicable by the British Government partly because of opposition from NFU and the food trade.

Some farmers, he report claims, were against vaccination because of a "mistaken belief that EU law prohibited payment of possible compensation for the possible loss of value of vaccinated animals".

The draft report also remarks that: "Relatively small special-interest groups (parts of the meat-producing farming sector and the food trade) seem to have had an undue influence over decisions affecting the well-being of whole regions in the management of the FMD outbreak".

The committee also found that "considerable shortcomings" in Britain's contingency plans had been identified as early as 1999, but "hardly anything" had been done to rectify the situation before foot-and-mouth struck in 2001.

In the future, the report says, EU policy on animal diseases should take into account lessons from 2001 on the " psychological impact on the public and effect on non-agricultural sectors, such as tourism."