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DEFRA HAVE NO AUTHORITY TO KILL HEALTHY ANIMALS AND NO AUTHORITY TO KILL FMD VACCINATED ANIMALS

1. The issuing of Forms,A,B,C,or D does not mean that animals will be slaughtered.
2. DEDRAT inspectors only have legal powers to enter premises which have or are suspected to have a notifiable disease i.e. FMD.
3. The grounds for 'reasonable suspicion' are that the animals have been in contact either directly or indirectly (i.e. adjacent to), with animals that are proved to have contracted the disease and are therefore 'dangerous contacts'.
4. If the above is NOT the case then the DEDRAT or there agents can only enter your premises with your express permission. Otherwise they are committing 'trespass' and if any locks etc. are damaged then this is 'criminal damage' and should be reported as such.
5. There is no firewall policy of slaughtering healthy animals. The government has authority only to slaughter those animals that they think are likely to have been exposed to the virus.

Animal Health Act

The Animal Health Act 1981
This relatively little known piece of legislation was enacted to consolidate the Diseases of Animals Acts of 1935, 1950 and 1975, the Ponies Act 1969 and the Rabies Act 1974. Section 1 of the Act contains a general Ministerial (or now in Wales, the National Assembly) order-making power, allowing such orders as are thought fit "generally for the better execution of this Act, or for the purpose of in any manner preventing the spreading of disease".Section 31 of the Animal Health Act introduces Schedule 3, dealing with the slaughter of animals in relation to various diseases, which include foot-and-mouth.

Paragraph 3 of Schedule 3 provides specifically for foot and mouth disease,and sub-paragraph 3(1) reads as follows:

This is a closely confined power, carefully drafted. It does not create any power to slaughter healthy animals, three kilometres away, on a "firebreak" basis, or because they happen to be on a holding contiguous to one where an outbreak has been confirmed. It is based on the likelihood of the animal already having been exposed, not on the possibility of its being exposed in the future.

The DEDRAT website appears to suggest that because of the highly infectious nature of the disease, it is believed that susceptible animals on farms neighbouring a farm where infection has been confirmed will have been exposed to the infection. This would appear to be a highly dubious basis for the measures adopted. Comment prepared by Stephen Tromans Barrister, Eldon Chambers, London

NFU PROPAGANDA CAMPAIGN AGAINST VACCINATION A SCANDAL

Letter in The Daily Telegraph,
from Christopher Booker and Dr Richard North,
6 August 2001.

SIR - May we use your columns to deplore the continuing campaign of
disinformation which has been waged by the National Farmers Union against
the use of vaccination in the foot and mouth crisis.

Nothing has done more to prejudice both farmers and the public against
vaccination than claims made by the NFU leadership on the issue, almost
every one of which can be shown to be factually misleading.

One persistent claim, for instance, has been that any animals vaccinated
must be destroyed. On Saturday's Today programme, the NFU's policy director,
Ian Gardiner, stated unequivocally that "under Community law, the Dutch were
forced to kill all vaccinated animals, and I don't understand why that law
would not be applied in Britain".

This is simply not true. When, in April, Holland was authorised by the
European Commission to use vaccination, the Dutch government was not "forced
to kill all vaccinated animals".

With those animals subject to the "protective vaccination" regime, it was
given the option to allow them to live, though this meant it would take
longer for the country to regain its disease-free trading status.

Even more strikingly, when the British Government was authorised in March to
vaccinate cattle in Devon and Cumbria, by Commission decision 2001/257, this
carried the condition that "such vaccinated animals are not subject to
pre-emptive slaughter".

The NFU has made similarly inaccurate statements about almost every other
aspect of vaccination, ranging from the unfounded claim that it does not
work with sheep to the charge that inoculated animals may still spread
infection.

Just why our leading farming union should have chosen to oppose a policy
which might have saved millions of animals and the livelihoods of thousands
of its members remains a mystery.

But the methods it has used to distort public understanding of this issue
are nothing short of a scandal.

The following notes were drawn up under legal advice. The information may be extremely helpful to producers who are affected by the MAFF extended (contiguous) cull policy, and who feel that culling is not justified in their particular case.

Guidance notes for contiguous cull:

1. Nobody has any wish to disrupt DEDRAT's attack on the spread of this disease, and therefore farmers with livestock out at pasture (or in sheds) directly next door to a field or shed upon which there has been an outbreak obviously have to accept the inevitable and co-operate with MAFF in every way (sadly, this includes culling).
2. But where healthy stock are a long distance (between half and two miles) from an outbreak; AND/OR there is woodland or arable or 'empty' (i.e. ungrazed) land inbetween; AND/OR their stock are held in separate blocks; AND/OR they are organic, in-conversion, a rare breed, etc. a farmer has some lawful rights and procedures and options:

fmdaction@ukfarmers.com

 

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