Superpoppy

 

The versatile Papaver somniferum

I have been telling you so for some time (ITYS passim) that poppy grown in Afghanistan should be purchased by NATO and converted into biofuel.   This would add up to a winning strategy in the otherwise endless Great Game, in my unhumble opinion.  Predicatably, few have listened.

My arguments are even stronger now than they were in 2007. Biofuel made from poppy would create a legal outlet for what the farmers already grow, so no more costly-daft-deadly attempts to make them grow cereals. Burn it in a bus and it is less pongy than chip-shop oil. It is green sustainable energy grown by renewable Afghan peasants. It ticks all the boxes. 

Poppy->fuel yield is not only respectable (119 US gallons per acre) but genetically modified poppy can be richer in energy conversion potential.

Poppy is a competitive and important fuel crop that can be put to use without necessitating the destruction of a single cubic centimeter of rain forest.  

We could not only allow the Afghans to grow poppy, but to grow more. And promise to buy all of it. This has to be cheaper than trying to destroy it.

 The GM super poppy is described here – an article that shows that great minds think alike. 

Superpoppy as a game-changer in the Hindu Kush must surely be less delusional than the recently attempted efforts in Afghanistan by NATO and the ISAF (I saw Americans fight). Indeed, it is an idea entirely consistent with the radical Obama concept that we should engage with the Taliban rather than shoot missiles at Pashtun wedding parties.  

Let the Taliban be famous throughout Central Asia for their delicately perfumed “Golden Brown” brand of diesel fuels. 

Biofuel yield of conventional somniferum compared with other crops is here. 

Indian scientists produce non-narcotic somniferum with excellent oil yield although they emphasise potential as food crop.

Gordon’s solution for the Afghan crisis: a Common Agricultural Policy for poppy!

Never mind the army, send Defra to Helmand province.

Gordon Brown, the prime minister whom we are repeatedly told is brilliant, has let it be known (see all newspapers) that he has a new solution to the Afghan problem. It is to institute a system of agricultural subsidies to encourage farmers to diversify from the production of poppy. This will bequeath to Afghanistan a proven system for managing agriculture that has been such a success in Europe.

As a client of Defra, I thoroughly applaud this idea. The senior management of this government department should be sent to Afghanistan at once. Starting with the chief vet. The executive of the National Farmers Union could accompany them, to offer their colleague farmers advice on milking. (Milking the system, that is – not cows!) And harvesting. (Harvesting the subsidies, that is – not crops!)

This is not, by the way, remotely like my own plan to save Afghanistan. Which is that we should simply buy all the poppy and turn it in to bio-diesel.

Daft. Error. Farce. Ridiculous. Arrogance.

Cattle Farming: The Herd Struck by Cattle Plague, Slaughtering the Infected Animals
Michael van der Guch, 1660-1725. Seventeenth-century disease control methods still being used by Defra.

And so it came to pass that the journalists, other than those of the BBC, with its direct line to Page Street, had enough of the pathetic lies told by Defra. And as the national food logistics chain felt the strain, Defra and its cast of clowns was finally to be smitten by the tougher media treatment they deserve. Because of the deficiencies of our faux-democratic system including the lack of transparency or accountability of the government and its servants and the short attention span of the media, barring even more new outbreaks, Defra may still get away with it. Wales and Scotland are both free to move animals to slaughter. The “stakeholders” (meat producers) are demanding Defra quickly ease restrictions in England, too. Defra has immediately capitulated to the demands of the stateholders. Defra is feeling lucky.

The idea that this new Defra shambles could all have been avoided is finally penetrating the consciousness of the journalists not that they are able to do much as interest has movewd on from this story even as the horrors emerge (panicked cattle shot down by Surrey police “marksmen” is just one such shambles of which more can be read at warmwell). 

Some hacks are just smart enough to have figured out that Defra SW1 may be a long way from the rural muck but nevertheless it produces a line of pure bullshit and indeed this entire shambles began with a leaky toxic sewer pipe in Defra’s own back yard. Not to mention truck loads of contaminated soil taken off the Pirbright site to sites all over Surrey. Others are either not smart enough or simply report what they are told. 

I dare the hacks – I double dare them – to pick up some of this material we call farm yard manure, and throw it in the face of the department and its vulnerable secretary of state. (We lack squeamishness here in Surrey). But it is doubtful the media will demonstrate the necessary persistance.

Still, if I was the PM I’d be bloody furious that the comrades had screwed this up. And I think the odds for vaccination are starting to shift, especially next time.

The distinguished vet Carl Boyd lives next door to the latest infected premise and they are coming this morning to test his cows. The cows are showing no symptoms. They are the perfect animals to vaccinate. I am hoping he will demand the right to do so. He is one of the smartest men I know (consultant to my Percheron horse Rodin, as it happens) and not a pushover. The government and its thugs have just run into someone who I personally would not wish to have as an enemy. So, the situation has come to an interesting pass…

Warmwell is here.

George Herbert, the parson poet, whom we read on the recommendation of Emma Tennant, wrote:

Cowards tell lies, and those that fear the rod;
The stormy working soul spits lies and froth.
Dare to be true. Nothing can need a lie.
A fault, which needs it most, grows two thereby.

*******

Click here for your official Defra FMD movement licence for your rat

They reap as they have sown

The return of foot and mouth disease to Surrey has “baffled” ministers and provoked the usual reaction from the so-called National Farmers Union. (It’s not a union – but a producer cartel.) The new prime minister is clueless. The title of this blog announces why I must return to this subject.

Witless ministers today profess themselves incapable of understanding why the disease has come back just one day after they officially announced it was beaten!

“Baffled” says tonight’s Evening Standard. “Puzzled” admits the Environment Secretary responsible for animal health Hilary Benn, who graduated from Sussex in Russian and East European Studies and has the massive experience of having been in his job since June. The NFU’s president Peter Kendall sounds just like all previous NFU presidents and has demanded once again that the disease be “stamped out” (this being NFU/Defra code for slaughtering healthy animals, with full compensation paid by everyone else).*

Predictably, sticking to the script, slaughter “on suspicion” has already resumed. Why not slaughter pensioners with influenza? Oddly, this is the same government that offers flu vaccine, on the NHS. Like a broken record, our beloved Prime Minister Brown is promising to eliminate the disease. Just as he promised last time! The V word does not pass his lips.

Once again, those of us who have since the 2001 débâcle been demanding vaccination have been ignored. Once again, we have been proved right. Had Defra ring vaccinated immediately following the original outbreak this summer, the cows now infected in the shadow of Windsor Castle would not be infected. I told you so. By not vaccinating now they are making themselves look like idiots.

Nothing is very complicated here. The disease is back because ministers are scientifically illiterate and because Defra and the NFU, led by the glamorous film star turned hapless chief vet Debbie Reynolds, despite their proven track record of failure, remain firmly in control.

One needs hardly to be reminded that the latest outbreak like the one that proceeded it originated with the escape of the virus from a government laboratory with collapsing toxic drains that nobody could organise themselves to repair and lorry loads of contaminated spoil being trucked off the site in all directions.

God forbid this is the standard of biosecurity prevailing elsewhere on the government’s biochemical estate.

For anyone who still fails to understand the absurdity of this, I recommend Abigail Wood’s book, A Manufactured Plague.

Abigail’s book questions how foot and mouth came to be seen as one of the world’s worst animal plagues, although it poses little threat to human health (although in the UK without much doubt it seriously affects human mental health and has a negative human impact in many other ways). She asks why, in the epidemic of 2001, the government’s control strategy still relied on Victorian trade restrictions and mass slaughter. Her book is brilliant.

Abigail shows that for more than a century foot and mouth has brought fear, tragedy and sorrow – damaging businesses and affecting international relations. Yet these effects were neither inevitable nor caused by foot and mouth itself but were, rather, the product of the legislation used to control it, and so in this sense foot and mouth is a ‘manufactured’ plague rather than a natural one.

Abigail, like the rest of us, has been ignored. The NFU, which defends the exports of its members no matter how many billions it costs the rest of us, meanwhile retains statutory rights of consultation (in effect, so far, a veto) over government policy. Foot and Mouth has cost the country between £10 billion and £20 billion since 2001 in order to protect a trade worth a tiny fraction of this sum. Has our government, has the prime minister, the intelligence to do a simple cost-benefit calculation? This is madness.

The only good news is that the Queen’s pad at Windsor is in the middle of the control zone. She’s a countrywoman at heart. Maybe she could have a word with Mr Brown and tell him to stop his ministers and their officials acting like such stupid cows. Go for it ma’am – we peasants are depending on you.

Warmwell remains the indispensible source for hour-to-hour developments.

The estimable Matthew Weaver’s FMD blog is back in The Guardian.

Sheepdrove’s blog is also indispensible.

* This looks encouragingly like a potentially serious crisis for the NFU (known in my manor as “no fucking use”) whose traditional “line to take” is now out of step even amongst the growing disgruntled “members” of the NFU. There are numerous successful and humane British farmers (such as Sheepdrove) who are loudly pointing out that they also have rights, including the right to compete in the market if necessary with vaccinated meat. It must be asked – if we have to have a row with the EU, so what? In the meantime the NFU is dangerously exposed and revealed as the emperor with no clothes. Farmers are now really stuck and it is largely because the NFU has colluded in an antediluvian policy. Even the farmers who once towed the NFU line on vaccination have grown curiously silent.

Stop press: Friday morning, 14 September: It would be odd if we were about to win but the odds just increased a little bit, although they are still very long against us, Mary and I feel. We also think we are being read in Whitehall and the news offices and are starting to make a difference. I get the same feeling. I am still worried Defra might try to sabotage a vaccine trial.

Remind me again: why are we not vaccinating?

I do not go to Defra press conferences and they probably would not let me in the building. Besides, the sun is shining and we are behind on the haymaking. But perhaps one of the zombie hacks in attendance at La Reynold’s next performance could briefly bother to ask the chief vet why animal owners are not allowed to vaccinate against FMD at their own expense? They could ask her if it is true or false that vaccinated animals can be differentiated from infected animals. And after she has explained why owners like Sheepdrove should not be allowed to vaccinate, even at their own expense, they should ask her to disclose Defra’s own vaccination protocol. If Defra is finally forced to vaccinate will they then insist on slaughtering vaccinated animals? If so, why? They should ask her to release the minutes of the stakeholder group meetings and to disclose who the members are. I ask because I really, really would like to know.

The news from Dorking is not great as I have a pig over there… and a lot of people coming to lunch. Can anyone tell me where I can source a giant marrow, to feed 100?

The Guardian’s estimable Matthew Taylor is back for more live news blogging here.

It is on Matthew’s blog that I see the chief vet has disclosed that we are now within a 7-day period when it is possible to vaccinate, although no decision has been taken to do so:

12.00pm: Debby Reynolds says that Defra believes the foot and mouth outbreak may now be contained and that the risk that infection will spread outside the affected area is “very low”.

She told a press conference that day seven of the outbreak was a critical day, as it was the first time a decision could be made to vacinate, but – for now – there will be no vacination of animals.

Still no news on the third suspected outbreak in Dorking – outside the protection zone – though the farmer is confident that his calves are suffering from a pneumonia infection and not foot and mouth.

Can someone help me understand the significance of seven days?

The NFU is insisting today that they are “not against” vaccination. This is in a letter attacking “smart Alec” journalists (I presume I am among their number) and includes the curious claim that “we are not against vaccination.” This really won’t do. The NFU have been hysterically against it for years. When have they ever been for it? Under what circumstances would they urge vaccination? Have they advised Defra or shared with Defra any opinions on the use of vaccination at present? This denial of the NFU that they are against vaccination is slippery and disingenuous as well as brazen and arrogant.

Compassion in World Farming who are my near neighbours in Godalming have proposed a very sensible “vaccinate to live” policy which I am waiting to hear the NFU endorse.

Dial 999

Call the cops! There’s been dirty work at the crossroads. Something nasty has been spotted in the woodshed.

In its Initial report on potential breaches to biosecurity at the Pirbright site, 2007 the Health and Safety Executive “confirms” Pirbright as the source of the FMD virus. As reported here on Saturday. You would have to be very dense not to have figured this out already.

Wind and water are unlikely vectors, says HSE. The great flood theory advanced by the glamorous chief vet is a problem because, er, the water flows away from the farms and towards Pirbright. And the air filters seemed to be working. Not that everything looked honky-dory, if you read between the lines. It seems Defra is responsible for regulating the FMD virus whereas the HSE is responsible for other oversight, so here are two new questions: (1) how are/were these responsibilities co-ordinated, or were they, and (2) how and who at Defra was discharging this responsibility? If this person exists, their reports must be disclosed. I suspect the buck here actually stops at the desk of the glamorous chief vet. Here is another lovely picture of her:

So, the suspect vector is human. Acting either negligently or criminally. A specific human, as I proposed two days ago? There is “chatter” that laboratory people may have had a number of improper contacts and have violated employment contracts prohibiting these. But that there is one Prime Suspect. “Presentational” management of the HSE ensures we have a document to deconstruct that has been deliberately designed by the government’s finest spin doctors to be as opaque and non-committal as possible.

There are various potential routes for accidental or deliberate transfer of material from the site, says HSE. As a statement of the blindingly obvious, this is a classic. And then this fascinating couplet:

We have investigated site management systems and records and spoken to a number of employees. As a result we are pursuing lines of inquiry. Amazing. Incredible.

Release by human movement must also be considered a real possibility. Further investigation of the above issues is required and is being urgently pursued.

The polished blandness of this, redacted by Sir Humphrey in person, tells me this is Whitehall Speak for: “Oh, shit!” There is obviously a lot going on that we are not being told, although I promise we shall find out. Just some initial thoughts. “Various potential routes” means more than one. “We are pursuing lines of inquiry” confirms they have one or more suspects.

So much for the vaunted biosecurity, then. And so much for the government’s hope that this could all be quickly blamed on Merial labs. That HSE have not immediately done so is suggestive, if not conclusive.

So, Pirbright is a potential crime scene. A couple of lard-arsed coppers lounging around the front gate (as seen on all TV channels) seems an inadequate response by the Surrey constabulary.

Round up the usual suspects!

Another crime scene is the newsrooms of the national media who are blundering about oaf-like on this story. The word “vaccination” was banned from the BBC 6 o’clock national news program yesterday. Sky has a very pretty girl outside Pirbright who knows the square root of fuck all about FMD and would struggle to define or even spell epizootic. Sky has a medical correspondent who seems to be getting around this, but their continued reliance on the NFU as an authority is perverting their coverage and making them look ever more naive and stupid. The BBC as one might expect is slavish to official sources.

The newspapers meanwhile print tosh as today’s unsigned Guardian panel on vaccination shamefully demonstrates. The Guardian has had a good blog on this for a couple of days but the Whitehall staff are conduits and the paper has not yet really hit its stride. The Telegraph is keen. The Times is wildly unreliable; their reliance on official sources and leaks too obvious, the suspicion of spin always too close.

I am working on a list of the 10 top things about FMD as I am told lists generate enormous numbers of clicks (and like all bloggers this is the subject that obsesses me most, as well as knowing how many readers I have in Albania). Please send me your nominations. An early candidate for the top most stupid thing is from Sir Brian Follett in The Sunday Times who sagely declares: “the reason we slaughter animals is because, in island countries, it works. We can keep the virus out.” This is pretty delusional, isn’t it Sir Brian?

Updating at 10.03 a.m.: Le Monde has just arrived with a brilliant Plantu cartoon illustrating a story that declares there to be a “Pénurie mondiale de lait: les prix vont monter.” The French government, says the paper, is going to seek an adjustment of milk quota to meet demand for milk and milk products which is now outstripping supply in Europe.

Updating at 12.05: Hooray! Matthew Weaver’s blog is back in the Guardian.

Hooray again!!! Sheepdrove is back.

15.00: Sky continues to produce the worst sort of commodity journalism with painful absence of producers who understand the science or the ground reality. To the dichotomy of ground reality versus system reality there is the third dimension of media reality which is completely detached from either! The imperative of 24 hour TV is that powerful authorities are capable of manipulating it almost all the time. Sometimes, an “event” can disrupt this control but usually the authorities will maintain their overwhelming influence on the definition of the narrative. Only independent and authoritative journalists can challenge this and even so they are limited in what they can do. This is why I read the media to know what’s in the media, but not to discover what is actually happening.

Vaccinate now – cull the NFU

I fear that one of Surrey’s finest herds of cattle is currently being exterminated. The herd of Aberdeen Angus has a distinguished pedigree but yesterday a couple of heifers seemed to have minor symptoms of lameness and the response seems to have been to kill them all. (I hope I am wrong and am doing more checks – but it is confirmed that they are killing more animals.)

Update: The herd being culled has been identified and is not the one I initially feared. More on this later. I still inclined to the view that this outbreak can be contained – but only if the government acts now to deploy its most effective weapon.

Waiting for animals to develop symptoms and then killing them is less effective as a means of preventing the spread of this illness than immediately ring vaccinating the affected area. The Dutch know this. The immunologists know it. It is rejected in Britain by a producer’s cartel who have created a situation where the taxpayer indemnifies them for their business risks and mass slaughter of healthy animals for cash is the raison d’etre of their business.

If the government will kill all the animals and pay for them then it saves all the costly business of feeding the beasts and selling them on the open market. Never mind that some do not want their animals killed, because they are used for milking, or for smaller-scale production aimed at local markets. Or that most of the animals killed are healthy. Or that even animals with foot and mouth can make full recoveries. Or that it is safe to eat vaccinated meat. And that tests can distinguish vaccinated animals from diseased ones.

In Britain this cartel is represented by the ill-named National Farmers Union which is not a union but an annex of the still deeply sinister Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. This perverse relationship has profoundly damaged the British countryside in the past and threatens to do so again.

The NFU agribusiness cartel spent yesterday demanding slaughter using the code words “stamping out” to describe taking healthy animals and killing them in a field, a process to be followed by the dispatch of large checks. And the horror is that once again the NFU is getting what it wants, popping in to Downing Street, appearing next to the chief vet at Defra news conferences, and being treated by 95% of our moronic media as the only authentic spokesman for the countryside.

So, we are back to slaughter on suspicion and the killing of dangerous contacts. No disease even needs to be proven. And the indicators of scandal continue to shoot into the red zone.

There turns out to be a history of biosecurity failures at Pirbright. The place is falling apart and a hugely expensive refurbishment project is supposed to be starting now. Yet only now is a serious independent examination getting underway of the biosecurity at Pirbright.

Oddly, this strategic national laboratory seems to exist without the slightest oversight by anyone, as far as I can tell. I doubt that Waverley borough council has a clue how to regulate class 4 biosecurity laboratories. This statement is not correct. As a later story makes more precise, Defra seems to be responsible for some of this and the HSE for other parts. It is still rather opaque how this surveillance has worked in practice and the evidence suggests it has not worked at all.

It seems that Pirbright have just received planning permission for all sorts of schemes but none of this has been covered in the Surrey Advertiser as far as I can tell, nor would it be, it not being the dream of estate agents to sell costly mansions on the doorstep of a hazardous biochemical research park.

So here we are and after years of arguing for a scientific approach to disease rather than a commercial one in which an illness is elevated to an economic crisis, the situation is the perfect scenario for vaccination. The specific virus is known. The vaccine is in stock. There is currently just one cluster of disease hence a ring vaccination scheme can be implemented with high confidence.

Not vaccinating is more than negligent it is stupid and vastly increases the chance this disease will spread. I suppose the NFU doesn’t really care because the suits who run it will just get more and bigger checks, and they never see the animals, anyway. I sggest that an NFU “member” who disagrees open his books.

Small farmers are ignored by the NFU (although it takes their money, persuading them by its clever marketing that it is an authentic countryside voice.) But of course these “country” members are entirely unrepresented when it comes to the big decisions.)

The stupidity of journalists like the one on CNN yesterday who repeated the lie that vaccination hides the disease is very probably attributable to the mendacious briefings offered by the government, the NFU and the NFU thugs and fellow-travellers who control certain Internet news groups (such as U.K. Business Agriculture, the nastiest place on the net).

These people conceal their real interests and character-assassinate those who have advocated putting a scientific approach ahead of the compensation cheques. It is a scandal that farmers get compensated for illness. Nobody else does. It is a scandal that the NFU has exercised a veto on policy. It is a tragedy that Gordon Brown cannot see any of this. You do not need to be a vegetarian to know that killing a child’s healthy pet goat is wrong. Or that individuals should have the right to choose vaccination for their own animals, in preference to a disgusting policy of exterminating precious animals, domestic or commercial, on the whim of some vet (another unjustly deified profession).

The entire annual meat export trade is worth less than one block trade in the city of London. British agribusiness, such as it is, is actually pretty feeble, and pretty often vile (who is for a Turkey from one of Bernard Matthew’s sheds?) When are we going to get real about agriculture and stop allowing privileged producers to raid the Treasury?

I live in the country and  drink at the pub with people who farm. We are making hay in our meadows right now. Many of these farmers are friends. But I don’t ask them to send me a cheque when I have writer’s block. If they are worried about foot and mouth they should buy insurance, or vaccinate. Why is this a problem?

The calculation of ministers, armed with their new media skills, is that what the public doesn’t see, will not upset them. Hence the rush to keep the helicopters out of the sky. The BBC and Sky news had already self-censored the most graphic images of the last slaughter in which the Woolford cattle were shot down side-by-side, one by one in a makeshift pen. The cowardice, ineptitude and ignorance of the 24-hour news channels is a subject for continuing discussion. A hare-brained blonde on Sky explained they had censored their pictures to spare us distress. This, apparently, is news judgement at Sky – we will not be shown the truth, so that we may be spared distress. Only journalism rivals politics for its hypocrisy.

Anyway – no danger the viewers shall be distressed, the new air exclusion zone means all further images will be censored.

I am still somewhat confident this outbreak may be limited in size – even though there are serious questions when it really started. In a report on the OIE site the glamorous Debby Reynolds has apparently reported that the “Start date” was 29/07/2007. The 29th of July? But that was the Saturday before the Thursday evening when “symptoms were reported to the local Animal Health office”.

“Is this a mistake – or were symptoms actually noticed five days earlier? It matters,” notes the always on-target Warmwell, another battle-scared veteran of 2001!

The government is running out of time to show they have really learned any lessons from 2001.

Notably, Abigail Woods, a lecturer in the history of medicine at Imperial who was brilliant in 2001 at exposing the lies of the NFU and their lackeys, has returned to the fray in today’s Guardian, here.

I was travelling today and am now returned. I hear Sky News has once again covered itself in shit. The problem with Murdoch’s media is not their transparent self-interest but their mediocrity.

Check frequently with Warmwell for news updates.

Excellent Guardian FMD blog here run by Matthew Weaver, journo who may just “get it”. Matthew is doing a great job tracking the news. Indispensible.

What the hell is going on at Pirbright?

One thing definitely upgraded since the 2001 FMD disaster is the government’s management of information. A good thing for them because the disclosure that the current FMD epizootic could be “made in Whitehall” ought to be a considerable scandal and probably would be if the hacks were not so dense. As in 2001 the best information is not coming from the mainstream media but the bloggers of which Warmwell is the gold standard.

On Sunday we had a choreographed series of news conferences in which the hand of synchronity was readily discernable. The prime minister himself – caring and serious, doing everything possible, stressing the countryside was still open. So that’s all right, then.

The Institute for Animal Health was the first to come out pointing the finger. I think they may have been represented by Gene Kelly, in his softest shuffling shoes. I do not claim to understand this outfit. They may or may not be responsible for Pirbright, it is hard to tell. I confess I am not even clear who owns the freehold, who has the licences, or who issues them. Anyway, they are the first, emerging to say they are cooperating with the government but that their biosecurity is flawless. As even the hacks could figure, this implicity points the finger at Merial Animal Health. Merial has a lab at Pirbright but the relationship with the Institute remains opaque.

So Merial sends a spokesman, a Mr Donald O’Connor, of fancy footwork, to say that they are cooperating with the government too and their biosecurity is also flawless. Or maybe this was Homer Simpson. One could say he is dancing to the suggestion that the virus could have escaped from the next-door Nissen hut. This could be construed as pointing an implicit finger at the Institute. But Merial is the obvious fall-guy, guilty or not. Whitehall was already briefing on Sunday night that Merial is their prime suspect. There is a suggestion that investigators may have identified an individual as a vector of contact. Stay tuned.

This was a shameful moment for Sky and the BBC live from the scene whose reporters were professionally raped by Merial. What is the point of satellite uplink trucks if your reporters are zombies? No questions were permitted of Merial, despite their status as prime suspect! This is news management at the logical extreme – the journalists are treated simply as conduits. Reporters should have protested and physically obstructed the Merial executive from leaving without answering any. But the days of real journalism are long gone.

Then the chief vet, the glamorous former Hollywood star Debby Reynolds appeared, telling us that more animals were being killed and that it was too soon to judge the cause of the outbreak. This is of course ridiculous in that it is obvious the cause of the outbreak was a biosecurity failure at Pirbright, even if the specific vector is not yet told us. The question is: what is and has really been going on at Pirbright? If the questions are being asked at all, they are not being answered in public.

Can someone help me on the history, please? Am I wrong that Pirbright was once a MAFF research station? What exactly has happened recently or is it a longstanding arrangement that this collection of not quite Nissen huts on the Hog’s Back (irony) has become some kind of public-private virus campus? Does anyone know or care what is in fact the nature of the science happening at this place? Should it be there at all? It has London at its front door and the countryside in the back garden. It sounds like a Michael Crichton novel waiting to happen. Except it has already happened. Is this where we want to create our virus pole? I do not recall anyone being asked.

Whether or not the government’s administration, strategy and delivery on animal health are much better this time around than in 2001 remains to be seen. Disregarding that the outbreak started at a quasi non governmental complex. They have been oddly lucky this time – I don’t think there is much evidence of movement and none so far of spread. I will already concede they have been a little less dreadful than last time. La Reynolds is certainly an improvement on the sinister Mr Scudamore. But the NFU still seems to retain a veto on policy. Why can’t ministers see through this cartel? Is it because it claims to be a union, and appeals to some left-over leftish nostalgia among our “Labour” rulers? Ministers must know that the NFU’s purpose is to drain the treasury. It’s as democratic as the Soviet Union (using a remarkably similar voting system). That’s all.

If you look at Pirbright on Google earth it is a mess and who can tell whose lab belongs to who? The Tories may be on to something if they start sniffing for maladministration. It seems certain money has a part to play in this, and the desire of the government to spend less. The government real-terms cutback on animal health seems to have coincided with its outsourcing to an animal health quango. Is this part of the government or not? Yes – and no. It seems sure that conflicts of interest are built in.

We need to know much, much more about Pirbright. It seems clear there were warnings – ignored – of an inherently unsatisfactory biosecurity environment. There seem to me also some commercial questions to consider and whether there is a conflict between commercial activities and government research labs sharing the same site, when that site is well known to be largely obsolete and is poorly located for the work it does.

I do not know but I am not clear that it is comfortable that the Institute is seeking contracts on its own account while apparently simultaneously making facilities available to private companies such as Merial. What exactly are these relationships? All these contracts are doubtless marked “commercially confidential”. They will not want us to know.

The real danger of FMD is that it provokes mad administration syndrome, in which vast sums of money are spent protecting people who are grown up and should look after themselves. Nobody else is compensated like these big commercial farmers. Make no mistake. This is agribusiness. FMD and our response to it are the product of a diseased agricultural economy, in which European policy plays a part but Britain’s unique talent for maladministration makes everything worse.

The evil NFU plays a malign continuing influence and it is a subsidiary scandal that the media continues to treat them as a legitimate authority without pointing out the commercial interests of the people who run this organisation. Gordon Brown should ask himself why the government uniquely compensates the NFU’s members for business risk, and nobody else (except arms dealers). Farmers should insure themselves for epizootic risks, and the government should allow those who wish to innoculate their animals to do so.

Oversight and accountability are not features of the British political process and there will be less than ever now the government has mastered the tricks of concealing information and most of the media has given up looking beyond the official sources.

My neighbours are furious. The single word reaction of one of them last night, when I encountered him after making silage, was: “Bastards.” This is a widely held view. No matter how often the gorgeous Debby Reynolds bats her eyelashes.

In my neigbhborhood, which remains 5km from the surveillance zone, the initials NFU have long been widely regarded to stand for No Fucking Use. Click here for excellent (if now slightly dated) report on the NFU.

I am amused to discover that the search term “virus escape” generates 2,290,000 “hits” on Google.

Magnus Luinklater who was magnificent in 2001 is on top-form in The Times today. He is a solid writer.

Many of my old allies and friends from 2001 are returning to the radar screen. Warmwell, one of the best is here.

Update: I am now 2km from the edge of the surveillance zone.

The good, the bad & the ugly

I told you so yesterday afternoon and today all newspapers confirm that the FMD outbreak was a consequence of a biosecurity failure at the government’s own animal health laboratory.

The most searching and independent investigation is now required into the circumstances, although it may not lead anywhere. I have consulted my microbiology consultant at Cambridge who points out that biosecurity is never a matter of preventing a virus escape but merely of possibly delaying one.

It is in the nature of these viruses that they are sneaky. Prof. Brian Spratt of Imperial College has been appointed by Defra to head an inquiry into biosecurity at Pirbright. We need to know much more about terms of reference and potential conflicts before it can be accepted that this is a satisfactory approach. I would like to know that the police are involved, for a start, since Pirbright is potentially a crime scene.

A very initial thought: this outbreak may not be so bad, despite the damning and bizarre circumstances. Defra was faster to stop animal movements. The farms around Pirbright are pretty small and movements fairly limited anyway. So far there’s no evidence infected animals have been through the livestock markets.

If this was, say, a case of a lab worker running shoulders at the pub with a cowman, or a delivery vehicle stopping off at Pirbright, picking up the 01 BFS67 virus and dropping it off at the farm around the corner, and given the relatively small number of ruminants and especially pigs in the neighbourhood (often not much more than pets), this outbreak could be contained quickly.

It would be sensible to ring vaccinate now but I can’t see Defra letting this happen. So they will slaughter probably only a few hundred animals and get away with it. Still, there are plenty of open questions.

Terrorism is bound to be raised as a hypothesis. I’m very sceptical that there is a cell of Islamic veterinarians behind this, notwithstanding the supposed Glasgow doctor plot.

Cock-up and carelessness and inevitability seem more probable causes. Pirbright let an antique FMD virus out the door, which merrily and predictably infected cattle in an almost adjacant smallholding in Surrey. Or perhaps it was not Pirbright, but a commercial lab that seems to have established itself at Pirbright. It would be good to know who is responsible for biosecurity at this complex.

So, the presumption must be the virus release was accidental and/or negligent rather than criminal. Although criminal cannot be excluded.

A more inconvenient truth about Pirbright is that it is the wrong laboratory in the wrong place. The American equivalent FMD lab is on an island and answers to the Department of Homeland Security. Putting an virology lab next to the A323 might seem a counter-intuitive arrangement.

We need to know much more about Pirbright and the Institute for Animal Health, the quango that operates it and its current relationship with Defra. The annual report is here. The IAH claims to be “advancing, safeguarding and improving” animal health whereas in fact it has recently accomplished something else entirely. The commercial relationships of the IAH are also pretty opaque. To what extent had the IAH turned Pirbright into a vaccine factory, operated by a French pharma company? These are things we need to know.

What is the government strategy? We need to know whether they will again adopt a hateful and disgusting slaughter of healthy animals to protect the meat export market, which at a few hundred millions a year is an irrelevent proportion of Britain’s international trade.

I fear that Defra will again find excuses not to vaccinate and will instead slaughter on suspicion, hoping that this time they can do it more discreetly. Also, the law has been changed now so nobody will be able to resist without commiting a criminal offence themselves.

The spin control is already better. Debby Reynolds, after her lengthy Hollywood career and retraining as chief vet, is less obviously sinister than her predecessor although she is not a natural media performer. I was not impressed by her press conference performance on Saturday or that she recognises full and frank disclosure is vital to the interests of the rural community and the nation.

(Another spin control: Helicopters are now banned from recording the scenes of slaughter. Defra says this is to avoid causing “panic” in the animals but of course it is actually to spare the authorities from being broadcast at their dirty work. The animals in this case live in Surrey, where the sky is always full of helicopters anyway, and not just in Surrey, but almost next to Farnborough airport.)

We need to hope the media does better. The vaccination issue seems much more alive this time than it did at the start of the last outbreak. Reporters must also learn to recognise the NFU for what it is – an organisation representing the biggest and dirtiest commercial farmers, whose business is industrial production and subsidy farming.

More updates through the day.

The latest Defra release is here.

FAO note specifying biosecurity standards for such facilities as Pirbright is here.

Defra’s Pirbright Lab suspect in FMD outbreak

STOP PRESS (10pm): IT IS NOW ALMOST CERTAIN THAT THE VIRUS CAME FROM PIRBRIGHT.

It is a virus strain consistent with that found in laboratories, Defra says. A new exclusion zone includes Pirbright. The story is moving fast. But this disaster almost certainly originated in the government’s own FMD laboratory.

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The Pirbright Laboratory of the Institute of Animal Health is the leading suspect as the source of the virus in UK’s ongoing FMD outbreak. The IAH is a quango sponsored by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC). It’s “clients” include Defra, the Department of Health, the Department of International Development, and a number of international organisations. Biohazardous research and training is commonly performed at Pirbright including a diagnostics course 16 – 27 of April 2007 including ample receipt and preparation for FMD virus/antigen/genome detection; use of cell cultures for FMD virus isolation; ELISA for FMD virus antigen detection; preparation of primary calf thyroid cells for use in diagnosis; RT-PCR for FMD virus genome detection; FMD virus antibody detection by liquid phase blocking ELISA, solid phase blocking ELISA, virus neutralisation test and Cedi test FMD virus strain characterisation.

The laboratory is practically adjacent to the infected premises in the current outbreak and inside the 10km surveillance zone.

According to route mapping software the distance by road is 8.5km but as the crow flies it is closer to 5km. The Pirbright lab is somewhat south of Pirbright so the distance may be even closer.

If confirmed as the source this would represent a disastrous biosecurity breech by the government’s leading epizootic research establishment.

The laboratory is a world reference centre for and has major responsibilities to the Office International des Épizooties (OIE) and the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) for the diagnosis of diseases in an emergency. The diagnostic services are available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. The list of diseases for which diagnostic services are provided includes FMD and it is known that all known strains of FMD are held at Pirbright on a reference basis.

Here are two more questions: (1) If there has been a biosecurity breech was it deliberate or a mistake? (2) Given that FMD has long been considered a potential biological weapon, are the police involved in the investigation at Pirbright? (If not, why not?) The refusal to state the viral strain implicated does not bode well for official transparency.