LACK of information from the Government and a failure to learn from the 1967 foot-and-mouth outbreak hampered control of last year's crisis, North Yorkshire County Council has said.
In its draft submission to the Anderson inquiry into the epidemic, the authority makes several damning statements about how the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs handled the crisis.
The decision to burn culled stock on pyres, failure to vaccinate and the blanket closure of footpaths are all said to have made the county situation worse during the outbreak.
The submission, drawn up by Gordon Gresty, the council's director of business and community services, says Defra never showed the county its contingency plan for FMD and did not request the local authority plan to cope with an outbreak.
The council's own plan proved useful, although it was unable to prepare officers for the flood of legislation introduced during the outbreak, the cost in resources and money, the extent of extra licensing requirements which fell to local authorities or the huge demand for reliable information.
Mr Gresty's report also highlights a public perception that the Government was slow off the mark with information, which meant the council often had to rely on the media.
Legislation was often produced without warning, appearing on the Defra website at 11.45 on Friday nights.
There was also a failure to anticipate the non-co-operation of some farmers, including breaches of FMD legislation such as animal movement restrictions.
The Thirsk blue box bio-security zone was under 24-hour surveillance but infringements persisted and 12pc of vehicles stopped in the early stages were found to be flouting the regulations. This dropped to 5pc towards the end of the operation but still left trading standards officers severely stretched.
The importance of non-farming businesses, in particular tourism, was ignored by the Government, says the report, and the blanket footpath closures are described as an overreaction and devastating to the economy. The county's tourism industry alone lost an estimated £1m a day during the crisis.
"Guidance on this most crucial issue was non-existent both prior to the outbreak and indeed in the early stages," says the submission.
Conflicting information from Defra headquarters and its local vets made re-opening rights of way difficult. Policies such as allowing grouse shooters onto the moors from August 12 without giving local people access resulted in bitterness.
Smoking pyres also proved disastrous for tourism as well as public confidence in the authorities. "The issue of carcase disposal clearly must be addressed in future plans," the report urges.
Mr Gresty refers to the Northumberland committee, set up in the wake of the 1967-68 FMD outbreak, which recommended a slaughter policy reinforced by ring vaccination to control future outbreaks.
"The county council is of the view that this recommendation should be revisited and the use of vaccination must be considered as a means of controlling future outbreaks," says the draft report.
The submission praises some aspects of the handling of the crisis, including the decision to use the army to co-ordinate slaughter and carcass disposal.
It also suggests measures which should be implemented to prepare for possible future outbreaks. These include tighter bio-security, individual identification of all livestock, stricter trading controls, a vaccination policy, licensing of stockholders, compulsory licensing of all livestock movements and reviews of subsidy and compensation systems.
It also recommends a single national plan for disease control which takes into account all aspects of the situation, including advance identification of carcase disposal sites, clear definition of roles for local authorities and other bodies, regular liaison, contingency exercises, joint control centres, clear guidance on footpaths closures and use of disinfecting mats and the need for the agriculture industry to sign up to the policy.
North Yorkshire was the fourth worst affected area of the UK, with 134 confirmed cases of FMD between March and August. It was declared disease-free on December 31.
The draft submission to the Anderson inquiry was considered by Richmondshire District Council's FMD working group last night.
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