The Killing Fields
Over the last 35 years I have written about many scandals and many examples of inexcusable barbarism. For sheer evil nothing matches what is now going on in the UK.
Our government is using soldiers and huntsmen to slaughter hundreds of thousands of healthy sheep to preserve farmers' profits.
To anyone who loves animals this is like having Jewish relatives and living in Nazi Germany. Animal lovers must now sit and wait for the man from MAFF to knock on their door.
But mass slaughter on Britain's killing fields won't eradicate foot and mouth disease. The virus can travel in the air. And burying the virus won't kill it either.
Horses and dogs can carry foot and mouth disease too - though the government isn't yet killing them because they know there would be a public outcry.
The mass slaughter of hundreds of thousands of innocent sheep is unjustified and unjustifiable.
Laws about animal welfare are being ignored as though they don't matter. There is a risk that stunned or injured animals will be buried alive.
I feel depressed, angry and ashamed about what is going on.
Britons - supposedly animal lovers - simply do not seem to care. Citizens who would riot about the price of petrol do not seem concerned. Have you heard one squeak of protest from Britain's wealthy animal rights and welfare organisations?
I wrote to agriculture minister Nick Brown on 27th February 2001 asking why he wouldn't allow farmers to vaccinate their animals. Vaccination is dangerous and ineffective but I would rather see sheep vaccinated than killed. Now, at last, the government is seriously considering vaccinating animals. But it wants to kill them after vaccinating!
The best solution is the simplest: do nothing.
If we wait a few months the epidemic will be over anyway. The animals who contract foot and mouth will be ill for a couple of weeks and then they will recover. Farmers will suffer a mild loss because milk production will be reduced but the cost to the rest of the nation will be negligible.
The killing is unnecessary and wicked. It is to your shame and to mine that we have not stopped it.
Vernon Coleman
Copyright 2001