PIG PHOOEY
In that charming wartime spirit which has Britons falling over themselves to 'do their bit', the countryside this week has embarked on an orgy of responsible behaviour. Ashbourne's Shrovetide football match has been cancelled, school gates have been locked, mass rambles cancelled, and the mobile library service in Northumberland, where the foot-and-mouth outbreak has been traced to a pig farm at Heddon-on-the-Wall, has suspended its visits to rural bookworms.
On the face of it, this all seems a bit of a fuss to make over the bestial equivalent of athlete's foot. Visions of animals dropping dead by the dozen from foot-and-mouth disease are far-fetched: if animals led human lives, their flaming corpses would not now be lighting the night sky; they would merely spend a couple of weeks at home, scoffing choccies, watching daytime telly and bathing their cloven hooves in bowls of warm water before bounding back to work in a fortnight's time.
It is just that with the tight margins of modern meat production, two weeks off work is more than can be tolerated of an animal: beasts will be slaughtered because if foot-and-mouth disease were to become endemic in Britain, as it is in most of the world, they would put on weight too slowly to justify their keep.
Animal-rights fundamentalists will no doubt find this objectionable. But if you want to berate farmers over the ethics of meat production, Britain is not the place to start. Over the last few years this country has embarked unilaterally on a programme of improving the lot of farmed animals, which has in turn made our farms less competitive — and the animals more susceptible to diseases such as foot-and-mouth.
It is not just coincidence that has led to outbreaks of swine fever and foot-andmouth in the space of six months, and has had German newspapers christen us the 'land of sick animals'. It is a direct consequence of changes in the pig industry. Between 1967 — the last significant outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease — and the mid-1990s, lucky was the Englishman who got to see a live pig. The animals were cooped in narrow stalls in centrally heated 'factories', where they were fed on clinical diets, pumped with antibiotics and denied access to any activity other than eating and getting fat, It wasn't very dignified, but it did stave off foot-and-mouth.
Concerns over animal welfare have turned pig farming on its head. Two years ago, farming pigs in stalls was made illegal in Britain, adding £15 to the cost of raising an animal. Pressure from MAFF has driven down the use of antibiotics by 21 per cent in the past five years. Above all, many of the old pig 'factories' have closed, and in their place have popped up legions of little Nissen huts full of free-range animals. Now, 30 per cent of pigs spend the first ten weeks of their lives out of doors, and an increasing number spend the remaining 16 weeks of their short lives there, too. -But, while they are free there to indulge in piggy behaviour like rooting and wallowing, they are vastly more exposed to disease. They share the same ground as rats, foxes and rabbits, and breathe the same air as may already have passed over dozens of pig farms.
Pig farmers are a loyal bunch, and they don't like to criticise each other, but there is clearly some disquiet about the growth in open-air pig farming. Last August's outbreak of swine fever began among outdoor pigs in Suffolk; the resulting ban on pig movements within a five-mile exclusion zone threatened the livelihoods of several indoor pig units. One Suffolk pig farmer threatened with ruin commented; 'When I started with my father 35 years ago we used to farm pigs out of doors. We brought them inside, and have just spent £250,000 updating our barns, precisely so that we could prevent their exposure to disease.'
It is very touching that the nation has so earnestly taken to heart the words of Ben Gill of the National Farmers' Union who last week warned townies to keep out of the countryside: 'Your visit is not necessary.' But it is also somewhat futile. With openair pigs about, it doesn't take a townie picnicker or even the Northumberland mobile library service to spread foot-and-mouth. When the last case in Britain was recorded, on the Isle of Wight in 1981, it was traced to an outbreak in Brittany, the spores of the disease having travelled 150 miles on the wind. Rural Northumbrians are forgoing their Catherine Cooksons in vain, Sooner or later we must make a decision: do we want to embrace industrial farming — in which case animals will lead disgusting lives, never seeing the light of day, but meat will be cheap and we will have a viable export industry? Or do we want animals to lead natural, 'organic' lives, when our meat industry will become uncompetitive, and for the poorest people a rasher of bacon will be reduced to an occasional treat, and the organic diseases of yore, like foot-and-mouth, will have to be tolerated?
Other than the state of perpetual crisis in which British farming seems now to exist, there is no real in-between.
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