Vaccination – left too late
9 April 2001
Vaccination – left too late
I THINK that the decision to vaccinate should have been taken immediately, as it was by the Netherlands.
In this way, hopefully hundreds of thousands of animals could have been saved.
The country is in mourning, for its animals and for its farmers.
We all feel the pain, no matter how far or near we are to farming.
We all feel the injustice. If vaccination had been adopted from the start, perhaps we could have ring-fenced this before it got this bad.
There is a general feeling in the public that this government tried to treat the public as fools, not understanding the issues.
There are many many of us now in industry and business who clearly remember the outbreak in the 60s and this again has been ignored.
We are not children who know nothing of this – we have lived it before.
I feel that a gross injustice has been done to farmers and to the animals.
We have a zoo not far from here. If it cannot open after Easter it is doomed. The rare species in it are doomed also, because no one would have them afterwards.
I will never, repeat never, forget this, or forgive this government for doing so little, so late, for things we hold so dear.