Shambo, and hundreds more.

"The next day there was no dawn chorus"

Shambo hit the headlines.He seemed to symbolize something very dysfunctional with the way DEFRA manages crisis in farming.On the radio this morning a farmer related his experience; he lost hundreds of cattle when they were slaughtered by DEFRA in the last foot and mouth outbreak. He described how his cattle were left in a huge pile,after the slaughter, waiting to be disposed of. DEFRA informed him that the carcasses might have to be left there for a week, in his field. The farmer and his family were expected to live for a week with the piled carcasses of the animals they had cared for, lying nearby. He rightly described this as 'not decent', and described DEFRA as incompetent.

These animals were ,like us, capable of feeling pain, and fear. They were treated as lumps of meat even whilst they were alive, in a country which is supposed to be civilized.

The farmer described how the next day there was "no dawn chorus, everything was totally silent.....there were no birds....the birds disappeared....for weeks"

The return to smaller farms,or farms where acres are divided into smaller units to incorporate more diversity, where animal husbandry, ecology and environmental issues are easier to manage, would provide a sustainable way forward. A system that regularly expects hundreds of animals to be slaughtered because of disease is a brutal and in the end brutalising system,which requires people to shut out of their minds the reality behind the packaged food we buy at the supermarket.

Shambo has gone,-do we feel better now?-problem solved?

Shambo held up a mirror to DEFRA and will remain as a symbol against the 'maximum production at all costs' policies of DEFRA.

Farmers call to scrap set-aside a year early.Set-asides give way to more pesticides.

Set-asides are due to make way for yet more pesticides all over again!

Quote from the Press and Journal:-"cereal farmers are demanding set-aside is scrapped early as floods at home and severe droughts elsewhere in the world increase the prospect of more poor harvests-and potential food shortages."

Ironic isn't it, when it is 'intensive' farming which helps contribute to climate change, and causes soil degradation, which further contributes to the whole environmental problem. But they refuse to abandon the short term policies, and rush towards more environmental destruction-. ".....European farmers' organization Copa-Cogeca now wants a decision on set-aside by September so that growers can plan their 2008 cropping, and bring the land back into production to ensure more grain supplies and resolve problems created by surging demand for wheat to convert into bioethanol for fuel."

There are already big doubts by the experts that bioethanol is going to solve the problem of fuel supply, infact they fear that bio ethanol crops will add to environmental problems, but you can see why farmers and businesses will want to jump on the band wagon.

So, the tiny little vestige of effort that agriculture and DEFRA temporarily made towards stemming the damaging effects of pesticides on the environment and wildlife and livestock, by introducing set-asides, is now going to be abandoned.

Bovine TB

With the intensive farming system it is difficult to track the source of food. An American farming report which I read the other day, stated that hamburger meat may contain the meat of as many as 1000 cows!! We might be able to trace our own food produced in the UK, but do we know what sort of conditions the animal was reared under? Remember Bernard Mathews and his factory farmed turkeys and the avian flu outbreak? There are overwhelming arguments for buying local,organic and free range,not least the need for humane treatment of animals, and the avoidance of inflicting stress and pain on them.To talk round and round in circles about whether or not to cull or to vaccinate seems to be missing the point. Questioning our own behaviour and attitudes towards food and the farming systems which produce it for us would be good all round, for humans and animals I think,- but I know a lot of people disagree-usually for cheap food reasons.

Intensive Farming,and Factory Farming of Livestock. Culling, killing and slaughter.

The devastating effects of
livestock diseases which have

occurred in the UK are difficult to forget;
There is a correlation between livestock diseases and farming practice, including movements of cattle around the country.
The point of industrial agriculture is lower cost products to create greater productivity. When epidemics and mass culling happen, all farms and their livestock(even healthy animals) can be effected, whether their agricultural practice is intensive farming or sustainable farming.
The question I'd like to raise in this post is how many repeated mass slaughters are we, the food consumer ,prepared to accept in the quest for cheap food. I haven't discussed various farming systems, the effects on health and the environment, or animal husbandry here. I do not mean to imply that individual farmers who have suffered the devastating effects of culls on their farms were in any way responsible.
SE(bovine spongiform encephalopathy)- In November 1986 scientists first became aware of the disease. Up to the end of Jan 1998 approximately 170,000 cases were confirmed in the UK. 100,000 cattle were culled.
The human form of the disease, CJD, killed 165 people in Britain.

Foot and Mouth Disease,Spring and Summer 2001.There were 2,000 cases of the disease in farms in most of the British countryside. Around seven million sheep and cattle were killed in attempting to control the disease. This involved concentrating on a cull & then burning all animals located near an infected farm.
Avian Influenza. Feb 2007.160,000 turkeys were killed at a Suffolk 'farm' owned by Bernard Mathews.
Cattle TB. In 2005, 3,300 cattle were thought to be infected with bovine tuberculosis, with the figure rising at 18% each year. Badgers have long been blamed for the spread of TB in UK herds and the government has threatened a cull if further studies back this up. Other research has found that cattle movements are the biggest single factor in TB transmission. This same analysis threw up several issues of farm management, with hedges being particularly prominent; TB was markedly less likely in farms with abundant hedgerows and ungrazed strips of land along fences; but markedly more likely where hedges had lots of gaps. (Dr Fiona Mathews, Oxford University) calculates that "hedge-poor" farms are 60% more likely than "hedge-rich" ones to experience an outbreak.

ECONOMIC COSTS of OUTBREAKS

BSE- Farmers were offered a one-off compensation of £85 million pounds.

FOOT AND MOUTH DISEASE.-By April 2001, the UK government had announced the following compensation packages;

*£247 million compensation for slaughtered animals.

*£156 million 'agrimonetry' compensation of the sheep, beef and dairy sectors(over the £15 million compulsory aid.) .

*£200 million compensation for 'welfare' slaughter of livestock.

*£40 million payment of the pig industry restructuring fund brought forward to 2001.

*Rates relief for businesses affected by FMD., eg tourism.

*Rates relief for small businesses in rural areas affected by FMD, eg food shops pubs, garages with a rateable value under £9000.

* Unemployment benefits to people whose ability to work is effected by MD.

AVIAN INFLUENZA-Bernard Mathews was told by government he would receive £600,000 in compensation for healthy birds slaughtered in the bird flu outbreak, (despite health safety precautions having been breached)

CATTLE TB- No figures for yearly compensation are yet available here.£35m was spent on a government-funded study on potential culling of badgers, known as the 'Krebs Trial'.

Sustainable Farming v. Intensive Farming Systems

One third of everything we eat is pollinated by bees; this includes all fruit and most vegetables. According to many scientists working in this area, we have taken the process of pollination in agriculture forgranted. They say that even in this country, the uk, we have had a narrow vision of agriculture, which has been driven by the economic goal of quick, cheap food.
Quick, cheap food has led to mono-crops, and pesticide use. 31,000 tons of pesticides are sprayed on UK land every year.The photograph shown here is not smoke rising up above the trees, it is pesticide spray.

One example amongst many, of mono-culture in this country is the use of rye grass rather than clover. Mono-crops mean lack of bio diversity for bees as well as humans, which means that their immune systems are weakened. Mites have been cited as another possible cause of ccd (colony collapse disorder)in bees,but some mites are now resistant to two different pesticides, and scientists say there are no alternatives to these two chemicals.

Scientists and others are worried because research into ccd is being carried out by scientists working for the agro-chemical companies. They say that this research should be carried out by independent scientists, for obvious reasons! The agro-chemical industries risk loosing a lot of money if their pesticides, fungicides are found to be responsible. The UK government should be doing more to finance independent research into this serious threat, before colony collapse disorder takes effect here and in Europe.

Sustainable Farming

Global trade in food isn't viable anymore. Lots of reasons why not. Even apart from the problems caused by global warming, there are important reasons for nations to meet their own food needs;
Farmers and communities in the developing world are often exploited by globalization. Deprived of their old diversity of food crops which provided a good staple diet, they have to produce huge acreages of one crop(mono-cropping, or mono-culture) for export, often using vast quantities of pesticides.
If countries were able to meet their own national needs, free from the exploitative stranglehold of supermarkets and agro chemical industries,and market forces,- farming systems would be able to adapt more easily to the changing local conditions brought about by climate change. Closer communication between farmer and consumer would bring about a more democratic system.
Independant scientists(ie independant from agro-chemical companies)make an informed hypothesis that mono-crops are partially responsible for the colony collapse disorder in bees in the United States. Another strong suspect for causing this serious state of affairs, is the use of pesticides. I discuss this in my next post.