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Brussels to Control the Foot and Mouth FightThe Telegraph, 12 September 2002 Brussels would take charge of future foot and mouth epidemics under a new European directive that strips Britain of the power to decide whether to vaccinate livestock. Shocked by the emerging allegations of incompetence by British officials, the European Commission has concluded that no single member state can be trusted to tackle epidemic diseases threatening the whole union. The EC would have power to order vaccination. Countries worried by an outbreak in another EU state could trigger mandatory vaccination, meaning that Ireland or France could effectively override Britain's slaughter policy. The intervention by Brussels ends the reliance on mass slaughter that saw six million animals burned in Britain last year. The cull turned much of the countryside into a no-go area, led to a public outcry across Europe and was denounced as "immoral" by the Dutch farm minister. The draft law moves the European Union towards a policy of emergency vaccination, implicitly rebutting claims by the Government that vaccines are not viable because of the multiple strains of the disease. The commission will be able to order vaccination if infected livestock are not culled within 24 hours and contiguous animals within 48 hours. In Britain it took as long as seven days to carry out culls in the early phase, before the Army was brought in. The directive is to be published in early October. The draft version obtained by The Telegraph says: "The decision to introduce vaccination shall be taken by the commission on request of the member states directly affected, or on request of the member states under risk, or on the commission's own initiative." Brussels is to stockpile a million doses of the vaccine for immediate use and a further four million to be ready within 10 days. In an implicit reproach to Britain, the commission will police member states to ensure that their contingency plans are up to scratch. Specific requirements are set down for the number of vets and surveillance personnel and biannual field drills along the lines of recent exercises in Australia. "It's no longer going to be enough to have some plan sitting in a drawer at Defra," said one official. Responsibility for outbreaks will be devolved to regional centres, breaking the stranglehold of Defra headquarters at Page Street. Neil Parish, MEP, the Tory farm spokesman, said the directive was an indictment of Government policy. "These proposals, if they are true, highlight obvious errors made by Defra in ignoring pleas for emergency vaccination and more regional control," he said. "They show that even the Government's revised contingency plan is woefully inadequate." The new directive is a response to a year-long inquiry by the European Parliament, which has highlighted major shortcomings in British policy. Euro-MPs were shocked to learn that the British contingency plan was kept secret in the early days of the epidemic, leaving farmers in the dark at a crucial moment. By contrast, the French plan was posted on the internet. EC officials admit privately that they too failed in their duty to check that Britain's contingency plans were up to speed, a mistake they are determined not to repeat. Jan Mulder, a Dutch liberal MEP leading the inquiry, said he had some sympathy for Britain given the unexpected strain of the disease and the way it spread silently through sheep without exhibiting symptoms. "It's easier to be wise after the event," he said. "The catastrophe was on such a scale that it was hard to see how they could have contained it." But the hearings had exposed Britain's lack of control on meat imports as "a recipe for disaster", he said. The Government made a fatal error in waiting three days before stopping all animal movements. The shift away from the slaughter policy has been made easier by new international rules agreed in May, which make it less costly for countries to resort to ring vaccination. These rules limit the loss of foot and mouth free status from 12 to 6 months and confine the affected area to regions rather than whole states. Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
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