CULL

contiguous cull as the necessary price of bringing the outbreak under control.

“We, and that included our elected office-holders as well as senior staff, would have none of it. “Computerised carnage” was how Ian Johnson described it, a phrase I was only too ready to repeat on sundry television appearances. More to the point, we vowed to support any NFU member who was threatened by the contiguous cull and wanted to resist it. My doughty regional Legal Adviser, Alayne Addy, helped dozens of farmers keep the slaughtermen at bay for the necessary 21 days (the time it would take for any latent infection to show itself). MAFF insisted that we were risking the spread of the disease and would live to regret it.

“So let it be said that in only one of the 150 cases where farmers succeeded in resisting the contiguous cull did disease subsequently develop and that took no other herds or flocks down with it because all the neighbouring herds had already been slaughtered. As an editorial in the Veterinary Record put it, the contiguous cull was ‘the most bloody, tragic and disgraceful misjudgement ever committed in the name of science.’”