Archived News

23rd October 2007

A new Foot and Mouth Restricted Zone (RZ) has been put in place which includes the Surveillance Zone and another area where extra surveillance is being undertaken.  The boundary of this RZ is10km around these areas of surveillance.

Laurence received a call on Sunday from yet another person somewhere within the DEFRA offices at Guildford.  We have spoken to Spanish, Italian, Scottish and English vets over the past couple of months.

I think that communication has become even vaguer since August and that is actually quite difficult to achieve. Thinking back to the very first announcement of a temporary control zone which was being placed over a farm near Dorking, Surrey - we saw that on the news and half-heartedly laughed aloud, saying 'that couldn't possibly be us, because they haven't contacted us ...or could it be?'  And in fact it was us, but without even a brief word to us from someone at DEFRA, the Chief Veterinary Officer (CVO) made her announcement to national and international media, who by the early hours of the next morning had flocked to our farm.

Well here we are, now in October.  The call on Sunday was to say that testing on our cattle would begin today, thank goodnss it's not raining. They have chosen three groups to test and when we asked why they were going to test these particular cattle, the response was that these were higher risk animals.  We have no idea how they have come to this conclusion.

A very nice vet came out last Friday to ask which of us had been checking the different groups of cattle and for the grid references of all our stock.  It seems that DEFRA have not sent the vets out with a list of other routine questions which I would have thought could be of great help in their risk assessments.

With their knowledge of the September cases (only one or two positive cattle in a herd) maybe they should take a fresh look at farms with links to the first two infected premises because if they only tested a handful of susceptable cattle in August, could they have missed a positive case and not realised at that time? One might expect routine questions relating to Infected Premises when they undertake the current round of blood testing in their new restricted zone, it seems like common sense and would flag up the highest risk stock, maybe retesting those which may have had contact with an Infected Premises, person or vehicle.

If an FMD surveillance zone is put in place then DEFRA should request that all farmers who have had livestock within that area over the past say 2 months in this instance, (this would have covered all livestock which had been inside the zones since the August outbreaks) should make themselves known to DEFRA.

For example, between the August and September 'outbreaks' livestock would have been moved in and out of fields which later fell into the September SZ, but because those animals are not currently inside that SZ boundary they are not being routinely tested.

This could be significant bearing in mind that during what became a window of permitted livestock movements, Foot and Mouth Disease had not been eradicated as we had been told by the CVO, it was still out there and spreading. Animals in what became the SZ may have been at heightened risk during August and September, but some may have been moved just before the September SZ was put in place and they will not be tested like cattle which remained in an adjacent field within the SZ.

As time has passed, we have gained some helpful information via farmers within the second PZ who have picked up information from the vets carrying out surveillance on their stock.

In the Egham area, it seems that fewer livestock were found with the disease and that it was in some cases difficult to spot.  So an animal showing clinical signs in the morning may not appear that unwell by the evening, possibly due to this being caused by the escaped, weaker vaccine strain of the disease. 

The other point was that not all clinical signs were showing that easily and without checking the underside of the tongue, one could miss the blistering. All the grapevine information helped to give us a reason for the twice daily checks we are now asked to undertake. It's just a shame that the CVO didn't credit farmers with enough inteLligence to pass this useful information directly onto us as it was being discovered.

The testing of all cattle within the SZ should reassure us that FMD is now eradicated from England, let's hope that this will soon be reality. Back