Is the foot-and-mouth fight worth it?

If, as we are told, farming contributes less than 4% to the GNP, of that 4% even less will be in exports.

Surely we should be protecting the more important industries like tourism?

I have suggested to the Dartmoor Tourist
Association that “All open countryside that supports livestock running free should give that livestock added value over and above the market price”.

It is their very presence on that land that makes it appealing for visitors.

It harks back to a time before enclosures when all countryside was common land and the shepherds or herdsmen followed their stock wherever they wandered.

It represents freedom in our ever-more-restricted and
overcrowded country.”

I believe all livestock in such situations should be vaccinated and all rights of way that do not cross farmland or go near infected farms should be opened to let the blood start flowing back through the countryside.

This slaughter policy showed it didnt work for over 70 years after it was first introduced.

Technology, vaccines and tests have advanced so much
that there are at least four tests that can distinguish between vaccinated animals and diseased.

We have a small flock or pedigree sheep trapped among infected farms, luckily just too far away to effect us.

These animals are part of the appeal for visitors to our Devon B&B that no longer come.

FMD has affected the local cycle shop (people dont buy bikes they cant ride in the country); the local caterer who has lost busines from cancelled conferences; the tyre company that has no tractors to fit tyres to; the management training company that cannot use the countryside for team-building excercises; the canoe and hang-gliding company that was about to open a shop next door – the list goes on.

When will the authorities realise it is affecting everybody except those that live on a different planet.



Adrian@bushpark.co.uk