Foot and Mouth Disease: It was a miracle British farmers survived BSE - Julian Norton

In 2022, in contrast to how it would have been 1992, it didn’t cross my mind to perform a viral test on little Skippy, the cat found in a skip. (Incidentally, and just as happily, Skippy has found a new home, with walls and a roof, comfy sofas and kind humans, rather being metal and full of rubbish).

Other animal diseases have also disappeared over the same period. BSE came quickly and out of the blue but was eradicated very slowly and at a great cost. In my view, it was nothing short of a miracle that the British cattle farming industry survived that mysterious disease. Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD) appeared with equal speed, caused havoc, then disappeared in almost as miraculous a fashion.

Eventually, it seemed there were just not enough cattle and sheep left alive in the UK to allow transmission of the acutely infectious virus. Ironically, the mass cull of cattle in 2001 to try to control the Foot and Mouth Disease outbreak had a bonus effect on another disease: it was the final nail in the coffin of Brucellosis.

The biennial blood and milk testing of every breeding bovine over two years old had seen the number of cases fall steadily during the 1990s. But, in the aftermath of FMD, brucellosis disappeared too.

Still in the cattle world, TB has a perennial presence. The perfunctory testing, if we are honest, has totally failed to control this slow-burning disease. There is not sufficient space here to cover the ins and outs of this problem and nor am I sufficiently qualified.

So, to the latest infectious disease crisis. Bird flu has no easy answers or solutions. I’m certain that the road signs on grass verges around the country declaring animal disease control zone provide neither. As I look up and see actual birds flying above, none of which can read the signs, the measures seem even less useful than the disinfectant-soaked pieces of carpet that covered lanes and farm tracks in March 2001.

Poultry farmers can keep their birds indoors for ever, but as long as wild birds can fly, an infectious disease affecting our feathered friends will surely never be controlled in this way. It was just the same when us humans were instructed to stand two metres (or was it one and a half metres?) away from each other whilst queuing outside the supermarket. Or even inside the supermarket, for that matter.

Meanwhile, birds become sick, test positive, get culled or die. Baby puffins (pufflings) are found dead in heart breaking piles on the Farne Islands and Gannett numbers decline at Bempton. Someone told me yesterday, as we chatted whilst his dog became sedated sufficiently to be safely examined, that it’s impossible to buy duck breasts anymore.

While we can all probably manage without duck breasts, Christmas is on the horizon and the spectre of no turkey will seem unbearable for some. The same person who told me about the duck situation also advised, “If you see a turkey anywhere, just buy it. I reckon there won’t be any in the run up to Christmas.”

My mind went back to equally fraught times when another disease rampaged with positive test results and death. The shortage that time was, mercifully, not turkeys, but toilet paper.

Inexplicably, given that the disease caused coughing rather than diarrhoea, sensible, fully grown adults could be seen in droves with armfuls of toilet paper. All without any shame or embarrassment. I wonder what the pre-Christmas rush on turkeys might look like?