Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
since 1930. None of the war years anywhere near matched the epidemic years of 1922-24,
1967 or 2001.
It is hard to attribute any statistically meaningful rise in disease to wartime swill use, or
any conclusion other than that pigkeepers new to recycling needed to be reminded by the
government that it is wise to boil pigswill. Over the long term the figures suggest that the
main danger to livestock comes not from swill, but from the veterinary police themselves.
Between 1879 and 1892, when there was no CSF slaughter policy, there were 68,741 cases
affecting 330,913 animals, some of whom would have recovered. At an average of 4.8 pigs
per farm, these incidents were obviously distressing, but they were unlikely to be cata-
strophic for the owners.
In 1893, a slaughter policy for CSF was initiated, but abandoned in 1917 after the culling
of over 600,000 animals had failed to make any impression on the disease. It was reintro-
duced in 1963 and this time, after the massacre of over 400,000 pigs in three years, the dis-
ease was apparently eradicated. However in 2001 the disease broke out in a shed containing
1,200 pigs on a farm in Suffolk which reared 3,500 pigs in total. Over 74,000 animals were
slaughtered by the state vets before the disease was brought under control.
That, of course, is nothing compared with the bloodbaths carried out to rid the UK of foot
and mouth, a disease which is regarded as an irritation in countries where cattle have built
up resistance — foot and mouth is endemic in India, but that has not stopped it becoming
the world's largest dairy producer. In the UK over 273,000 animals lost their lives in the
1922-24 epidemic, 487,000 in 1966-68, and in 2001, six million (or ten million according
to those who believe MAFF was minimizing casualties). Two years before, in 1999 Y Le-
forban, secretary of the European Commission on Foot and Mouth Disease had warned that
'if the virus did manage to invade, it was likely to spread faster and further than ever be-
fore. This was because the trend towards intensive farming had led to larger, more densely
stocked farms, while the decline of international trade barriers had facilitated long distance
animal trading.'
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The vulnerability of large farms to infection can be seen most clearly in the rising toll per
outbreak from classical swine fever. Between 1893 and 1917, when there was a slaughter
policy, fewer than ten pigs were slaughtered per outbreak. During the Second World War,
from 1941 to 1945 the average number of animals put down per outbreak was just 1.5.
Since the slaughter policy was reintroduced in 1963 there have been nearly half a million
pigs slaughtered at an average of 275 per outbreak. In 2001, there were 16 outbreaks, in
which 74,000 pigs were slaughtered - an average of 4,625 per outbreak.
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While the loss of four or five pigs on a mixed farm is distressing to a small farmer, in-
fection in a shed containing over 1000 pigs is a catastrophe. As the FAO observe, 'classical
swine fever is a problem for pig producers who want to trade on the international market,
