Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
problem and stated in 2005 that its strategic goal is to 'move towards relaxation of certain
measures of the current total feed ban when certain conditions are met'.
10
But worse was to come. When the 2001 foot and mouth epidemic was revealed to have
originated on a farm which had been illegally feeding uncooked swill under slack MAFF
inspection, the Government temporarily banned the feeding of all swill and animal residues
to any animals, including pigs and poultry - a move conveniently obscured by the smoke
from the burning pyres. The Irish and French governments did the same.
When the foot and mouth crisis was over, instead of rescinding the temporary ban, the
UK government made it permanent, with the approval of the NFU and the British Pig As-
sociation, who were happy to disassociate themselves from such mucky practices, and pour
nice clean grain down their pigs' throats. There was minimal public consultation, and no
compensation for waste food recyclers who had invested thousands of pounds in new ma-
chinery to comply with the government's increasingly stringent regulations. The Associ-
ation of Swill Users complained to the Parliamentary Ombudsman who, six years later,
concluded that both MAFF and its veterinary service were guilty of maladministration, but
still refused to grant compensation.
11
On 1 November 2002, with support from the UK, swill feeding was banned throughout
the EU, partly because it was held responsible for some outbreaks of classical swine fever
(though this is also endemic in the wild boar population). Germany and Austria were giv-
en a four year derogation because the ban put an end to their highly efficient food waste
recycling systems, which fed an estimated six million pigs on swill, without their ever suf-
fering a disease outbreak even a hundredth as serious as the UK catastrophe. In the peasant
strongholds of Eastern Europe the ban may be having less effect. Hungarian Gábor Miklósi
reported:
Although no cases of swine fever have been reported in Hungary for quite a while
now, farmers resigned themselves to the ban on swill without a grumble. They prob-
ably doubt that any authority is going to carry out dawn raids on hundreds of thou-
sands of farms to check whether the regulations are being adhered to.
12
The European pig swill and rendering industries thus served as the scapegoat for the
UK government's century-long mismanagement of foot and mouth, a disease which causes
no harm to pigs and is about as serious to cows as measles is to European children. Over
six million animals were slaughtered by MAFF in 2001, to protect a beef export industry
whose existence creates a vacancy for the very imports which cause the problem. The
Government pinned the blame on the pig industry and helped persuade the EU to shut down
the food recycling system right across Europe.
