BY NORM DIXON 
Television viewers across the world could be forgiven for believing that rural Britain has been struck down by a plague of biblical proportions. Nightly, as the foot and mouth disease (FMD) crisis unfolded, breathless news reporters recounted the vast numbers of farm animals that had been slaughtered, or awaited that fate, as appalling scenes were shown of vast piles of rotting animal corpses and the horizon marred by spires of smoke from huge Gothic-like funeral pyres.
The widespread belief that the British countryside was in the midst of an apocalypse was further reinforced by the unprecedented restrictions placed on the movement of rural dwellers and hikers (with fines of up ?), the voluntary cancellation of many public social, sporting and political gatherings and even the postponement of the British general election from May until June.
In a move that could have been straight out of the script of a 1960s Japanese sci-fi flick, Britain's Labour government placed the army in charge of defeating what must, presumably, have been the viral equivalent of Godzilla (the task force was headed by a brigadier whose previous claim to fame was as a counter-terrorism specialist).
Surely, many viewers must have concluded, the threat to human health posed by the FMD epidemic must rank with the bubonic plague, ebola or mad cow disease. What other reason could there be for a government to place such serious limitations on civil liberties and to destroy the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of small farmers, rural workers and small businesspeople?
Not dangerous
Despite the hysteria whipped up by the capitalist mass media and the politicians, FMD is not a dangerous malady for beast or human. The mass slaughter of animals is designed to save big business profits, not human lives.It is extremely rare for people to contract FMD. In humans, the symptoms are no more serious than an extended bout of the common cold, with the added inconvenience of unpleasant sores in the mouth.
There have only been 45 confirmed cases since the mid-19th century (the only person to have contracted the disease in Britain caught it in 1967 he suffered no long-term effects and died of old-age seven months ago). There has never been a recorded case of human-to-human transmission of the disease.
Foot and mouth is not lethal to the overwhelming majority of farm animals that contract it. If left untreated, around 5% mainly the very young, the very old and the very weak of the creatures will die. The rest will suffer mouth ulcers and blisters on the feet for two to three weeks and recover.
The animals experience a loss of appetite. As a result, they do not grow to the size that they would have otherwise. Dairy cows permanently produce less milk. In most of the Third World today, in Britain until the late 19th century and in Europe until the early 20th century, small farmers simply accepted FMD as an inconvenience.
It is the big agribusiness corporations that gather almost all of the ?.2 billion generated from the export of meat and livestock from Britain each year that refuse to put up with the effects of FMD.
Modern capitalist agribusiness runs its farms like factory production lines. Each animal is expected to yield a precisely calculated amount of meat at the end of its precisely calculated life-span. Every kilogram that an animal is below the target size, or every extra month that it is allowed to live, results in an increase in the cost of production per kilogram. The giant supermarket chains buy huge quantities of meat from the cheapest supplier. So just a slight reduction in meat yield means lower profits and reduced markets.
While the impact of FMD on animals is relatively mild, it is very contagious. It can be spread by the wind, by the movement of contaminated livestock or by people who have been in contact with the disease. The disease also mutates often, much like human influenza.
The British Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAFF) insists that the best tactic to deal with the epidemic is the mass slaughter of all susceptible animals within a 3.2km radius of any farm where FMD is found.
As of May 3, more than 2.4 million animals had been slaughtered. The overwhelming majority were not infected with FMD. The number of confirmed FMD-infected farms stood at about 1540, with 22 others in Europe.
The mass slaughter policy in Britain, which dates to before the discovery of microbes, was first applied to FMD at the insistence of rich, aristocratic cattle-breeders in the early 20th century. They thought nothing of the immense losses that small farmers would suffer if it meant that FMD did not reach their valuable herds. Of course, the pedigree breeders' herds were exempted from slaughter and they were allowed to isolate their herds. As Abigail Woods, a veterinary historian from Manchester University, explained: Breeders, [who] perceived it as a disease inflicting severe economic losses upon their valuable stock, possessed the political power to impress these notions upon others.
Little has changed except that it is agribusiness and the supermarket chains that now call the shots.
Writing in the February 28 British Guardian, Woods pointed out: It was, therefore, the economic interests of the influential few which informed the original decision for state control of FMD. However, once these far-reaching measures were widely experienced and failed to control the disease they came to be identified with the disease itself. FMD occurrence began to be viewed as an economic disaster ... because it involved stock destruction and the prevention of marketing. The cure was worse than the disease.
Vaccination
Even if it is accepted that infected animals should be destroyed, there are alternatives to the hugely wasteful mass slaughter of uninfected animals. An effective vaccine is available for the type of FMD that hit Britain. Millions of shots are stored in Britain and in the European Union. Uninfected animals require one shot and a booster six months later. Within days of the first shot, the animals develop immunity.In 1999, Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria suffered outbreaks of FMD. The use of vaccines had it under control within six weeks. Vaccination is presently being used in Brazil to control that country's first outbreak. It was used successfully in Europe until 1991 when the European Union accepted Britain's proposal to halt the routine vaccination of livestock and adopt the mass slaughter policy.
According to the April 2 New Statesman, vaccination would have cost about ? million to implement during the current British epidemic, whereas the slaughter policy is estimated to cost close to ? million to carry out.
So why did the British government and the big business-dominated British National Farmers Union reject such a course? Because Britain's corporate meat and livestock exporters were not prepared to accept an extended interruption to their lucrative trade, no matter what the cost to the British people.
According to the March 31 New Scientist, had Britain taken the vaccination option, its sheep, pig and cattle exports to countries free of FMD such as the US, Japan, Australia and New Zealand would have been suspended for 12 months from the time of the last vaccination or the last FMD infection. Britain could then regain its previous disease-free status once the vaccinated animals were culled. If the vaccinated animals are allowed to live, disease-free status would be regained two years after the last case.
Nor would British exports have been completely halted if Britain had vaccinated. The EU would have restricted exports from the individual regions where vaccination had taken place, but the EU does not necessarily ban all meat and livestock imports from countries where vaccination has taken place.
Costs
The British Labour government's kow-towing to agribusiness and the supermarket chains has come at an enormous environmental and economic cost.In late March, the National Environmental Technology Centre warned that the use of petrol, kerosene and creosote to burn dead animals would release deadly cancer-causing dioxins into the atmosphere. On April 22, the Independent on Sunday reported that the British environment ministry had figures that showed that once all the culled cattle were finally burned, more dioxins would have been released into the air than all Britain's biggest factories would release in one year.
The NETC also issued an alert that buried livestock could contaminate water supplies in rural areas. Hundreds of thousands of bloated, putrid carcasses were left in the open for up to a week before being burned and/or buried. Rats, foxes and crows have feasted on the rotten remains, potentially spreading diseases far worse than FMD.
In the panic to deal with the growing mountain of unburied corpses, the MAFF approved burial of cattle born after August 1996, rather than being burned, despite fears that it could spread the much more dangerous mad cow disease through the water table.
The London Times reported on April 4 that 900 sheep and cattle slaughtered on a County Durham farm had to be dug up because they were contaminating a freshwater spring. On April 27, it was reported that 1500 sheep carcasses had to be dug up after blood leaked to the surface of a farm in Wales. In Northumberland on April 30, protesters refused to allow the further burial of carcasses in an abandoned mine after fluid leaked onto the road from trucks carrying the remains.
The restrictions placed on people's movement around the countryside and the hysterical press coverage of the FMD epidemic severely impacted on the tourism industry in northern England and Scotland.
It is estimated that country tourism in Britain provides five times as many jobs as farming. In some parts of Britain, there was a drop in tourism revenues of up to 80%. The number of overseas visitors to Britain dropped 25-30% in March.
On March 22, the Centre for Economics and Business Research cut its forecast for Britain's economic growth for 2001 from 2.3% to 2% and predicted that the ultimate cost to the economy of the FMD outbreak could be as much as ? billion. The CEBR said that lost tourism revenues alone would account for ? billion.
Capitalism
There is a monster loose in the British countryside that is devastating all in its wake, but it is not the FMD virus. That monster is monopoly capitalism.Around 80% of the output from Britain's 168,000 farms is now generated by farms owned by the agribusiness corporations. The largest 10% of sheep and cattle holdings produce 35% of output. The pressure of big business and the policies of British governments are driving small farmers off the land. Ten years ago there were 233,000 farms.
Traditional, family-run mixed farms are being replaced by vast corporate estates dedicated to monoculture crops (the corporate owners of which are the most enthusiastic promoters of genetically modified organisms) or intensive livestock feed lots.
Neoliberal deregulation, government spending cuts and big business monopolisation are tearing the heart out of country communities in England, Wales and Scotland. As the number of small farms has fallen, so to has the number of associated small businesses.
Local bank branches, post offices, supermarkets, schools, bus routes and government offices have closed. Since 1991, the number of local abattoirs have been reduced from 1000 to 350. Tens of thousands of jobs have been lost.
Conveniently for agribusiness and its Labourite toadies, the FMD crisis and the government's emergency measures will be the final nail in the coffin for many of the remaining British small farmers. It hit especially hard in northern England, where most of the remaining small farmers are located.
Small farmers who have lost their valuable herds have been compensated at minimum market prices. As FMD struck in lambing season, the MAFF's decree that the unborn lambs of culled pregnant ewes would not be eligible for compensation was another body blow. There will be no compensation for the costs of disinfecting farms. Large numbers of small farmers deep in debt to the banks and finance corporations will go broke.
According to report in the April 11 UK Guardian, The government plans a major reduction in the number of farms and farmers as a part of a recovery package for British agriculture in the wake of the FMD outbreak... Minister expect that by 2005 as many as 25% of farms almost all small ones will have closed or merged, with 50,000 people forced to leave the industry... The Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food ... argue that large-scale farms tend to be more productive, and are more likely to compete successfully in an increasingly liberalised trade in world food.
According to the Guardian, the MAFF is predicting that the number of farm workers will decrease by 3.5% a year until 2006. In 2006, the number of farmers may could fall below 300,000, a drop of 100,000 since 1994. There are presently about 350,000 farmers in Britain.
Rampant greed
Ironically, it is capitalism's rampant greed for maximum profits that has paved the way for and intensified the FMD crisis and other animal diseases. Sheep and cattle that were once grown, killed and consumed within a relatively close radius. Outbreaks were much easier to contain and trace.Today, vast numbers of animals are transported enormous distances to be killed in far-off abattoirs, or exported live across Europe. This allows disease to be spread rapidly. To make matters worse, it is known that stress caused by being transported long-distances reduces the ability of animals' immune systems to function properly.
Modern capitalist factory farming also creates the conditions for diseases to develop and spread. Large numbers of animals are forced to live in closely confined areas. This too causes stress. When a disease outbreak occurs, many more beasts are infected.
To ward off this increased risk of disease, capitalist livestock producers include doses of antibiotics in their animals' feed and hormones to induce rapid growth. But this practice helps create super-germs resistant to antibiotics. These bugs can affect both animals and people.
In the name of trade liberalisation within the European Union, health checks and the enforcement of other regulations on animals as they cross European borders have been dispensed with. It is now near impossible for European consumers to identify the source of the meat they buy a lamb from Britain need only reside in France for two weeks before the meat it produces can be described as French lamb by supermarket chains!
A major contributing factor to the FMD outbreak has been cuts in British government services by both the previous Conservative Party government and the current Labour government.
The original source of the outbreak was in a filthy, neglected farm, in which live pigs were found in pens with rotting pig carcasses. This farm should have been closed down long ago on animal health grounds, however in the 1980s Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's government slashed the number of government vets.
The FMD epidemic is just the latest of a series of outbreaks to hit British farming. It was just recovering from an outbreak of swine fever last year that led to the destruction of 300,000 pigs. The mad cow disease disaster which has cost the British taxpayers ? billion so far to control and has led to the elimination of millions of cattle continues.
Mad cow disease (BSE Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy) was spread by agribusinesses' efforts to boost milk and meat production by feeding cows protein supplements that contained the remains of sheep and cattle, some of which had been infected with BSE.
In 1981, the British government allowed feed manufacturers to reduce the temperature at which it processed feed containing animal matter and to no longer use solvents. This was agreed to so as to boost feed-making corporations' profits by reducing energy costs and the cost of raw materials.
The result was that a sheep variant of BSE was able to survive and was passed to cattle. Almost 200,000 cattle are known to have contracted BSE, 180,000 in Britain. Around 100 people have succumbed to the fatal human variant of BSE since 1996.