Peter Hardwick of the British Meat Processors Association (BMPA) asks why lessons learnt after the 2001 foot and mouth crisis were not heeded in the response to January’s confirmed FMD cases in Germany.
The reporting in Germany to the World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH) of foot and mouth disease (FMD) in a herd of 14 water buffalo on 10th January this year sent alarm bells through the EU and the UK. The fact that three of the animals were found dead indicated that these animals had been infected for some time, meaning that there was every possibility that the disease had spread, not just within Germany but beyond its borders. Germany is a major exporter of fresh and frozen pork and at 73,000 tonnes in 2024, second only to Denmark as a supplier of fresh and frozen pork to the UK.
In Defra’s own preliminary outbreak assessment, we are reminded that, “The virus spreads easily through contact and airborne transmission and can quickly infect entire herds. People can facilitate the spread of the virus through fomites via farming equipment, bedding, shoes, clothing, and vehicle tyres that have come into contact with the virus.” So, given that we did not know at that stage whether the disease had spread beyond Germany, why were we not deploying disinfectant mats at all points of entry and prohibiting all personal imports? These simple precautions would have helped to reduce risk until we had a clear enough picture to make the precautionary assumption that the disease had spread.
Mats were not deployed, and personal imports were limited to high-risk products. Operators have the knowledge and processes to make decisions on what can and cannot be imported, backed up by certification, but individuals would have no idea of what a heat treatment of D1 or above is. So, we should have introduced a blanket ban until we knew otherwise, with a view to scaling back once the full facts were established.
Even for commercial imports, according to Defra, it took four days for the procedures to change to prevent the import of high-risk goods from Germany, with some reporting that this took as much as week, during which time high-risk goods continued to enter the country. This should have taken hours, not days.
I lived through the horrors of 2001. That FMD outbreak was first detected on 19th February 2001 and by the time the disease had been eradicated in September 2001, more than six million animals had been slaughtered: more than four million for disease control purposes, and more than two million for welfare reasons. In 2002, the National Audit Office (NAO) estimated the direct cost to the public sector at more than £3 billion and the cost to the private sector at more than £5 billion (£14.5 billion in today’s money).
The damage went far beyond the livestock sector and hit non-farming businesses hard as well. The initial closure of most footpaths by local authorities also had a very severe effect on the rural tourist industry.
In 2001, it was recognised that a major weakness was the inability to rapidly report and trace movements. With the current paper-based systems it might take a week to get on top of the movements if there was an outbreak, and we could quickly find ourselves back in the situation we faced in 2001. It is therefore essential that we have comprehensive mandatory digital reporting. Happily, the outbreak in Germany appears to be contained and has not spread but one can only hope that this incident is the wake-up call needed to get this done.
A £14.5 billion unwanted hit to already hard-pressed budgets and the growth agenda is something that both Government and industry would want to avoid; it would be a small price to pay to invest without further delay in processes that protect us better than we were almost a quarter of a century ago.
