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Farmers Building
up Resistance
What Is the
EU’s Hidden Agenda?
by Eva-Maria
Föllmer, Phd, and Daniel Günthert, MD, Zurich
First of all we
were confronted with the BSE crisis, and now foot-and-mouth. Both these crises
have severely affected farming in both the UK and the rest of Europe. Agriculture
ministries and governments were called upon to take responsible, swift, considered
and professional action for the sake of their citizens and, in particular,
their farmers. If politicians and agriculture ministers were incapable of
properly informing people and failed to introduce correct and necessary measures,
then at least under the threat of FMD they might have come round to rectifying
their ways. Wishful thinking. The delayed action taken by politicians has
remained, and questionable preventive measures have been justified with flimsy
arguments, and official explanations are amended almost daily.
An investigating committee with the task of evaluating
the measures taken will not be set up until the epidemic has finally been
brought under control. Why only afterwards? Is the idea to justify the government’s
procedure in retrospect in the same way as the Southwood committee did during
the BSE crisis? Remarkable, as it may seem, there was not even a single BSE
expert on this committee.
One cannot fail to notice that farming, which is so vital
to a country’s level of self-sufficiency, faces ‘elimination’. The des-truction
of agriculture will lead to the ruin of villages. The rural population will
then virtually be denied any independent basis of existence. Villages will
become totally subservient to the cities or become ghosts of their former
selves. In well-informed circles it is said that in 1998 an EU-meeting of
Agriculture Ministers was told of the European Commission’s long-term plans
to abolish livestock farming in the UK, and convert it to an area of arable
farming only—of course without the consent of the population. One rightly
asks oneself who will benefit from such a plan.
The UK exports more meat than any other EU country, an
equivalent of £1.3bn annually. Why should such a profitable industry
suddenly be given up? Is the plan to grow GM crops on this arable land? What
sinister plans are strategists hatching? Is the idea to supply only an elite
with high-grade and organic foodstuffs, while the majority are fed upon inferior
and manipulated products?
MAFF knew about the catastrophe well in advance.
The first official case of FMD in Britain was made public
on 20 February 2001. In the meantime documents have clearly revealed that
the epidemic had already been detected in January, and had possibly even
broken out earlier. On 31 January, David Owen shipped sheep from Wales to
France. These sheep tested positive for FMD antibodies and, according to
Owen, must have been infected well before 31 January. Foot-and-mouth takes
a minimum of two to three weeks to incubate, so those sheep obviously had
the virus a lot longer. Thus the epidemic must have been around at least
since January. The British Minister of Agriculture, Nick Brown, when confronted
with this evidence, gave a lame answer and also denied that such a transport
had taken place.
How does one explain that already in November last year
MAFF officials ap-proached T.G. Norman, Longtown, Carlisle enquiring to buy
‘burn timber’, timber which is used to burn large numbers of carcasses? In
addition it is known that a lady from MAFF contacted timber suppliers in
Staffordshire and informed them she got their address from the 1976 foot-and-mouth
list. Since trees are felled in winter during the coldest period and normally
immediately sold and dispatched, the huge amounts of burn timber for the
burning of animal carcasses which are now so much in demand, needed to be
reserved well in advance. One should note that the inquiries about the timber
took place weeks before the epidemic began (even if one takes the incubation
period into consideration).
Blair’s Government’s scandalous delaying tactics
Epidemics can only be combated effec-tively if all those
in charge act speedily and efficiently. Tony Blair’s cabinet waited more
than 30 days before it issued its first statement on the problem and ceased
to regard the affair as solely the domain of MAFF. Was this done purposely
to weaken the ministry so that afterwards they could easily restructure the
ministry to fit in with the global agenda – in the same way as it happened
in Germany a few months ago? At this point in time the epidemic had already
spread within Britain and also reached France, which was perhaps also the
intention. Only when the tourist industry approached the government and Tony
Blair was forced to listen to the ‘heartbreaking’ reports of the airlines
and hotel chains about loss of bookings, did the Prime Minister move into
action. He immediately contacted all the foreign embassies and requested
them to beat the drum for tourism. The reports of the farmers had never been
‘heartbreaking’.
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