Here in Essex, all we need now is the proverbial plague of locusts, and that will do for the barley barons as well
Published 05 March 2001
My faint memories of the 1967 foot-and-mouth outbreak are monochrome, but digitally enhanced by the events of recent days. There was a cattle farm up the lane from our house, and the warning signs went up and we kept our distance. A dog off the lead would have been shot. Although we were then outside the main area of infection, we heard daily of whole herds being put down. It was like an apocalypse.
Only one thing is different now. Then, the fields of Essex were dotted with cows, mainly Friesians, and one or two farms around here made their own cheese. Now there are hardly any cattle to speak of in the county. This is the home of the barley barons, and in August, before the harvest, the fields are an almost uniform toasted brown. Ironically, though, Essex has few cattle but more than its share of England's surviving slaughterhouses: which is why we find ourselves living just outside a foot-and-mouth total exclusion zone, the countryside closed down, and fear of the unknown dominating the conversation.
When BSE came, it did for our village butcher. One day his little shop was trading; the next, there was a large parking space where the shop had been. He could not afford to conform to the new regulations and stay in business, at a time of reduced demand caused by fear. Then we had swine fever a few miles north of us, which did for the pig industry. Now, foot-and-mouth paralyses much country life because it seems beyond control. All we know is that it spreads like wildfire, and those few local farmers with livestock prepare for perhaps their final beating. They'll be compensated: but, as others have found, you only lose your market once.
All we need now is the proverbial plague of locusts, and then that will do for the barley barons as well. Pillocks write in the newspapers that it's the fault of greedy farmers. Oh yeah? And when did you last hear the public crying out for an expensive food policy?
A colleague joked that God was, after all, new Labour because He had caused foot-and-mouth and got the Countryside March postponed. At least, I think she was joking. Even before foot-and-mouth, it was hard to find anybody round here who was not going on 18 March. The great success of the Countryside Alliance was to make the march about much more than fox-hunting, which has not the place in Essex that it does in, say, Leicestershire. People who have never hunted, or shot, in their lives were prepared to get militant, including quite a pile who had never voted Tory. The price of petrol, the closure of local post offices, the absence of decent public transport, the sheer ignorance of rural poverty that we witness among city folk - those feelings were all vibrant just 50 miles from Charing Cross.
Even in a village with plenty of commuters, we have our share of hardship. If it was Hackney or Moss Side, there would be specially funded units to talk about the problem, perhaps even to start to address it. However, the view appears to be that country folk start from a position of such incontestable privilege that any help for them would verge on the obscene.
My neighbour, who is well over 70, has worked all his life as a deer manager and game dealer. He and his wife allow themselves a couple of weeks' holiday a year, but that's it. He helps out the local police by darting deer that stray into urban areas or on to the M11. Other than that, he slogs from six in the morning until late at night selling his venison, pheasant and partridges, and providing a faultless local service not just by selling food, but offering expertise on all questions of wildlife management. Our children have learnt much of what they know of nature and the countryside from him. Until all the deer get foot-and-mouth, or somebody discovers mad-pheasant disease, he may be our last line of food supply.
Last year his hip gave in and, needing to be active to do his job, he was horrified to hear that the NHS waiting-list was a mile long. He dug considerably into his savings to pay for the operation, so he could work. The surgeon was so impressed that he waived the fee. It is probably the most definitive anti-new Labour story imaginable, but it's true. And if the deer do get foot-and-mouth, at least he'll be fit enough to kill them humanely.
During the Emergency - by which we mean the long years when rib of beef was banned by a government that refused to allow us to make grown-up decisions for ourselves - the butcher in the next village admirably took no notice of the silly rule. He was not blatant about it, but if you went in and asked for "something for the dog" you came out with bones with a large quantity of beef on them. Just before the Emergency ended, we served such a rib at a Sunday lunch party. The doorbell rang just as I was carving it and one of our guests - I think it was the celebrated wit Hywel Williams - conjectured that it must be the police, come to arrest me. When a policewoman indeed was shown in, there was much hilarity. She had come to check that my shotguns were all properly housed - something the police are obsessed about, even though the only people who get killed with legally held shotguns are the farmers who shoot themselves out of despair. I tactfully explained, as she checked my serial numbers against my licence, that the laughter had been because we had expected her to arrest me for serving rib of beef. "Oh no," she said, with that boot face the police have now perfected in Essex, as everywhere else. "It's not an offence to eat it, sir."
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