ON April 19, the Government's Chief Scientist, Professor David King, proclaimed the foot-and-mouth outbreak to be "fully under control". Four computer models indicated that, within a month, the number of new cases would be reduced to just one or two per day.

Three months later, with the disease still rampant in its Cumbrian epicentre, fresh "hotspots" appeared in the Yorkshire Dales and the North York Moors. Now the disease has returned, mysteriously and with a vengeance, to Northumberland, which appeared to have shaken it off three months ago.

Arthur Griffiths, The Government's divisional veterinary manager, says this unwelcome return provides "a stark reminder to all livestock producers and people visiting farms to ensure they continue to do everything possible to guard against risk."

It provides an even starker reminder of the sheer boneheaded stupidity of tackling this relatively mild, if highly contagious, disease as though the medical science capable of dealing with it does not exist.

It would be tedious to repeat the strong evidence and eminent opinion I have quoted over the last traumatic months in favour of vaccination. But a contribution that escaped me came in the June issue of the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine. Warning that foot-and-mouth outbreaks were likely to become more frequent, Dr John Beale, a leading virus expert, noted: "The latest foot-and-mouth vaccines are purer and more potent than their forerunners. They offer protection to many animals within days. And tests to distinguish between antibodies caused by the disease and those due to vaccination are also now convenient and reliable."

Australia is to adopt vaccination as a first response to an outbreak. Argentina intends vaccinating its entire stock of 98.5m beef cattle and, following a recent joint simulated exercise, the chief vets of the US, Canada and Mexico are recommending vaccination as the most effective control.

Faced with the new Northumberland outbreak, the county's farmers are said to be "very depressed, very nervous and fed up". What they and all in a similar state of mind should be doing is besieging the NFU, which has been the chief driving force behind the disastrous cull. In a term apt to the crisis, Britain's small farmers have allowed themselves to be led by the nose into a strategy framed largely in the interests of a handful of big farmers and their livestock exports.

Forgotten now is that, in March, the British Government obtained permission from the EC to carry out emergency vaccination in Devon and Cumbria, to which the disease was confined at that time. At £5 a time, vaccination of all 40 million of Britain's foot-and-mouth prone farm animals at the onset of the outbreak would have cost £200m. The direct cost of the cull is now around £3bn, with no end in sight.

Cancelled before the news from Northumberland were the British National Ploughing Championships, set for Penrith, in October. An official said: "The overwhelming view is that the championships should not proceed either in Cumbria or a different area." Does this not throw into sharp relief the selfishness of grouse shooters, prepared to enjoy their sport even in areas still off limits to the general public?

Published: Wednesday, August 29, 2001