High Court challenge
High Court challenge
to proposals for cull
By Shelley Wright Scotland correspondent
THE governments decision to slaughter hundreds of thousands of sheep in a bid to halt the spread of foot-and-mouth disease is to be challenged in the High Court in London.
An application for judicial review of MAFFs pre-emptive slaughter proposal was due to be submitted to the court late this week.
The legal challenge is being funded by Berks organic farmers Peter and Juliet Kindersley and handled by Bristol-based law firm Burges Salmon.
William Neville, a partner with Burges Salmon, said he hoped that, given the urgency of the situation, a judicial review hearing could be arranged for early next week.
"The legal basis for the challenge is two-fold," said Mr Neville. "Scientifically, my clients have been advised that, because the slaughter of infected animals has taken place so slowly, the disease has spread ahead of the slaughterers. Therefore, it was impossible to contain the disease by slaughter from the outset."
Current government strategy could not even keep pace with confirmed cases of foot-and-mouth disease, let alone an extended slaughter, said Mr Neville.
"And the second point is that we question the power of the ministry to slaughter animals on a precautionary basis."
Mr and Mrs Kindersley, who sold their Dorling Kindersley publishing house to Penguin books last year, run Sheepgrove Organic Farm at Lambourn. It extends to 809ha (2000 acres) and includes beef, sheep, poultry and cereal enterprises.
Mr Kindersley said: "Given the strength of the case for the alternatives to the mass slaughter of healthy livestock, such as vaccination, I simply couldnt stand idly by.
Place for slaughter
"Slaughter does have a place if it can outpace the spread of a disease. But there are no prizes for coming second in a race against an epidemic. I am afraid the evidence is that this is now what is happening."
By Wednesday evening, 430 cases of foot-and-mouth disease had been confirmed. More than 223,500 animals have been slaughtered but only about 160,000 of the carcasses have been destroyed. And another 95,872 animals on infected farms are still awaiting slaughter.
For that reason the cull was wrong and should not proceed, Mr Kindersley maintained. "The judicial review will test the rational basis upon which ministers have arrived at this course of action."
The scientific justification for looking at alternative control strategies that will be put to the High Court has been gathered by Elm Farm Research Centre.
A collaborative paper from various unnamed scientists insists that vaccination, not slaughter, is the way to control the current disease outbreak.
It states the virus is "simply too infectious under British conditions in high density stocking areas for control by slaughter policy", especially when the authorities are unable to match the maximum two-day diagnosis-to-slaughter interval that was achieved during the 1967-68 outbreak.
And the paper adds: "The epidemiology of FMD involving sheep is far too uncertain to have confidence that a mass cull within 3km would be effective or scientifically justified."
Emergency vaccination of stock in areas surrounding the current outbreaks, the scientists argue, creates an immune barrier to prevent further disease spread. It can also provide a rapid reduction in infection in outbreak areas.
In Cumbria, for example, the scientists believe that near 100% vaccination could be achieved within five days and almost complete herd immunity within 10 days.
"A reduction in cases to nil could be expected within three weeks," they state. *