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Animal health and welfare and human health and welfare are inextricably interwoven...
This is the inescapable conclusion from an out-of-control British foot-and-mouth epidemic, which is still raging after more than five months, four million animal destructions, 30 billion dollars of national economic damage and five farmer suicides.
Even the suspected source of the epidemic, a dilapidated garbage-feeding swine holding now facing prosecution for infringements of pig welfare and health regulations, is testimony to the link between quality of life for animals and people.
The owners scraped a meagre (some would say desperate) living from collecting cull sows from other farms and attempting, despite the inevitable inefficiency of the process, to fatten them for slaughter. The farm is by all accounts a nightmarish reflection of the desperate state that pig farming in Britain has fallen into. We have an increasingly uneconomic, financially drained, state-unsupported branch of UK agriculture where farms are understaffed, under-resourced and increasingly unable to attract and hold the trained, motivated and rewarded stockpersons that animals need.The UK political commitment to animal welfare was well demonstrated by its courageous, world-leading ban on stall or tether housing of sows, in January 1999. The ban is supported by an extensive package of other swine welfare measures of national and Euopean Union origin. Unfortunately the stall ban was one of a number of factors which has made pig farming in the United Kingdom increasingly uneconomic over the past three years. Consumers, thank goodness, want to be assured that their meat comes from animals that have enjoyed proper healthcare and quality of life. However, the bitter UK pig industry experience has been that when it came to the crunch "point of sale" - most consumers actually buy the cheapest meat, even if it is imported from countries with lower welfare standards. Lower welfare standards unfortunately mean lower production costs, because economies in housing and labour costs often outweigh the costs of impaired health and performance.
Supermarkets and other outlets in the UK have been quite happy to supply consumers with cheap pork, bacon and ham, even if it has been produced in breach of UK pig welfare regulations. The government has sadly been unable to intervene in this travesty of justice, because of European Union "free trade" regulations.
What use is political commitment to animal welfare if farmers lack the income, training and government support (i.e. parity with overseas competitors, including state-supported research and extension services) to farm in an effective, intelligent and compassionate way? The UK pig industry has been through a three year period of economic decline in which one third of farmers, usually the smaller "family" farms, have gone out of business.
The three-year downward spiral has left pig farms under-staffed, under-capitalised and demoralised - betrayed by government and by consumers. What use is vote-catching, self-righteous legislation if it is not backed by effective implementation?
In our tragic foot and mouth epidemic over 9,000 premises have now been depopulated of animals, irrespective of age (newborn animals are apparently not even included in the statistics), genetic uniqueness or emotional significance. The link between human welfare and animal welfare has again been highlighted, but at the same time the link between animal health and animal welfare has become very confused! Out-of-date EU animal health regulations, which envisaged neither the UK epidemic situation nor advances in diagnostic test technology, have strongly discouraged the use of strategic vaccination. In the absence of more freedom to use vaccine, the State Veterinary Service was led into over-enthusiastic and over-prolonged application of movement controls - controls which have severely disrupted rural life and the rural economy.
Inevitably, this limited approach to controlling the epidemic has on occasions been thwarted by desperate farmers - for example those whose sheep faced either starvation or a bureaucratic abandonment to giving birth under totally inappropriate conditions.
We know also that there has been some "inexplicable" spread of the virus to new areas, and that farmers facing ruin, unable to market their animals and faced with an uncertain future would be less than human if they were not sometimes tempted to relax their precautions against the more certain future of slaughter compensation money and subsidised farm clean-up operations.
What use are self-defeating "ivory tower" animal health and welfare regulations if they merely suck in imports and drive indigenous farmers to increasingly desperate activities?
© Copyright Michael J. Meredith 2001
Author: Michael J. Meredith
Director Pig Disease Information Centre
