Six months of foot-and-mouth in UK

The foot-and-mouth outbreak began in February this year

By CNN's European Political Editor Robin Oakley

LONDON, England (CNN) -- The first live cattle sale has taken place in the UK six months after the latest outbreak of foot and mouth first struck.

But if that was a sign of hope it was only a limited one.

The sale took place in Kirkwall, capital of the island community of Orkney off North East Scotland, 300 miles from the nearest known outbreak.

Relations have worsened between the government and the farming community since the first farm was confirmed to have the virus on February 20, 2001.

Media manipulation has been at the centre of some of the deteriorating relations.

Militant farmers took to London’s streets to demand an open and unrestricted public inquiry into every aspect of the epidemic.

The six months have been described by Ben Gill, the president of the National Farmers Union, as “the worst outbreak of foot and mouth the world has ever seen from scratch."

A total of 3,750,000 cattle, sheep and pigs have been destroyed and the future of 1,960 farms are in doubt.

Compensation costs incurred by the British taxpayer have already soared to more than $3 billion and the epidemic, which delayed the British general election this year, has devastated the UK tourist trade as well as demoralising many rural communities.

Gill blamed the government for lax enforcement of “pathetic” border controls for the arrival of the disease in Britain.

“This foot and mouth epidemic follows swine fever. Both cases, we think, resulted from illegal imports from the Far East yet we’ve done nothing to police our borders," he said.

"It’s not as if the legislation isn’t there. There’s a lot of legislation that could help protect us.”

He told CNN that the government had mistakenly cut back on scientific research, and that it was wrong that veterinary authorities had initially had to grapple alone with the biggest logistical challenge the country had faced since the Gulf War.

A broader-based structure at the centre was needed to cope with such crises.

Ministers insist they have done all they could to get on top of the epidemic but the NFU president added: “The whole basis of control mechanisms didn’t come into play quickly enough. There was a breakdown of communications within government. That meant that people weren’t getting the right messages back to the centre.”

A more militant farmers group, Farmers For Action, who helped to co-ordinate the fuel price protests against Britain’s Labour government last autumn, greeted the six month anniversary by taking to the streets of London in a protest march calling for a full public inquiry.

Some of the FFA members on the march predicted a further surge in foot and mouth cases, especially if the disease is not eradicated before the winter.

The Blair government has set up three different inquiries, one into the handling of the epidemic and the lessons for the future, one into restoring profitability in the agricultural sector and one into the science of animal epidemics.

But the key first inquiry, to be chaired by Dr Iain Anderson, will not sit in public and his power to compel ministers to supply documents or to give evidence are limited.

Protesters, like many of Britain’s media and politicians, are demanding a full public inquiry which the government says would cost too much and go on for too long.

David Handley, leader of the pressure group, declared: “There is an urgency behind these calls for a public inquiry and we will not stop fighting.”

Some of the protesters said they might, in future, take a lesson from French farmers, who have been known to fill roads with lorry loads of turnips, and plan more disruptive protests in future.

The FFA accuse the National Farmers Union of being too co-operative with the government and many of those on the march were bearing placards in favour of a vaccination scheme for livestock rather than the slaughtering policy backed by the NFU.