With a 6ft safety cordon separating buyers from the sales ring, liberal quantities of disinfectant for all animals, people and vehicles and at a safe 325 miles from the nearest outbreak, Scotland took a tentative, symbolic step out of the foot-and-mouth nightmare yesterday.
The first live sale of cattle since the disease swept Britain was held on Orkney, prefacing a more important milestone for Scotland, where tight control has kept new outbreaks away since 30 May. In nine days, Scottish farmers and dealers reach the more important deadline when they can apply for a resumption of overseas exports, because then they will have been free of the disease for 90 days.
The auction at Kirkwall, capital of the Orkneys six miles off the mainland, was seen as a trial run for the resumption of trade in other unaffected areas of the United Kingdom.
Though no more than two dozen buyers, many of them mainland farmers from Aberdeenshire, made the ferry trip for yesterday’s sale, only auction and government veterinary officials, and representatives from the Scottish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, were allowed close contact with the livestock. The buyers, dressed from head-to-toe in hats, clean boiler suits, rubber boots and white plastic raincoats, had to forgo the usual close inspections of the cattle before the sale began.
For the Orcadians, the resumption of the weekly cattle mart was more than just a lifeline for business. The social effect of the closure has been devastating. Since the beginning of the crisis, movement on the island has been curtailed because friends and neighbours fearful of spreading the disease kept their distance from other farms.
1/26 February 2001
Around 150 dead cows that may have come in contact with foot-and-mouth disease are burnt on a funeral pyre at Great Warley Hall farm in Great Warley, Essex, 27 February 2001. The farm is just miles from Little Warley, where signs of foot-and-mouth disease were first found
Rex Features
2/26 February 2001
Cheale Meats workers disinfect their boots after leaving their facility in Brentwood, Essex, where the outbreak started
Tom Pilston/The Independent
3/26 February 2001
Ministry of Agriculture officials survey the burning of livestock carcasses at Heddon-on-the-Wall farm in Northumberland on 26 February 2001 following an outbreak of foot-and-mouth. Two further outbreaks of the virulent disease have been discovered in Wiltshire and Devon
Reuters
4/26 February 2001
Officials from the Ministry of Agriculture start work on a pit for the slaughter of 600 pigs at a farm near Heddon-on-the-Wall, Northumberland
Reuters
5/26 February 2001
The carcasses of hundreds of culled animals being prepared to be burned at Burnside Farm in Heddon-on-the-Wall, Northumberland, on 25 February 2001
PA
6/26 February 2001
Paul Cheale, director of Cheale Meats, talks to the press outside his farm in Essex
Tom Pilston/The Independent
7/26 February 2001
Officials from the Ministry of Agriculture begin to dump pigs and cows into an incinerator at a farm near Heddon-on-the-Wall on 25 February 2001. A probable new outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease has been found in southern England, meaning the highly contagious livestock disease has spread the length of the country
Reuters
8/26 March 2001
Slaughtermen move in to finish off sheep affected by foot-and-mouth disease on a farm near the village of Unthank in Cumbria on 23 March 2001. The overall number of condemned animals now stands at 435,491, meaning Britain is now just hours away from officially declaring the current outbreak more damaging than the 1967 crisis
PA
9/26 March 2001
A funeral pyre of slaughtered cattle and sheep burns in a field near Edenhall at Penrith, Cumbria, on 21 March 2001, as officials struggle to contain the outbreak
Colin McPherson
10/26 March 2001
Cow carcasses waiting to be burned on 3 March 2001
PA
11/26 March 2001
An Irish soldier and Garda (Irish police) officers man a roadblack at the County Louth border, close to the town of Dundalk in Ireland. The Irish government in recent days sent hundreds of extra soldiers to the border with Northern Ireland to set up checkpoints at all roads around the infected area in North Louth, where Ireland’s first outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease occurred
AP
12/26 March 2001
A lorry is disinfected after leaving a farm in Ramsbury, Wiltshire, where there have been cases of foot-and-mouth and where the animals have been destroyed
Tom Pilston/The Independent
13/26 March 2001
About 600 sheep from France and Great Britain are burnt as a precaution against the spread of foot-and-mouth disease at a farm in Bondues near Lille, northern France, on 5 March 2001
AP
14/26 March 2001
Geoffrey Miller at his farm gate in Dorset
Tom Pilson/The Independent
15/26 March 2001
Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother walks on a mat that has been disinfected as a precaution against foot-and-mouth disease, as she arrives at Sandown Park in Surrey for the racing on 10 March 2001
PA
16/26 March 2001
A pig farm in Oxfordshire
Tom Pilston/The Independent
17/26 March 2001
Dead sheep are carried away to be incinerated after they were killed in a slaughterhouse in Aubervilliers, north of Paris, on 2 March 2001. France has had no reported cases of the disease since it began on British farms and slaughterhouses, but the country plans to destroy more than 50,000 at-risk sheep as a precaution
AP
18/26 March 2001
The burning pit at a farm where animals were affected
PA
19/26 April 2001
A tree is silhouetted by a large burning pyre of livestock infected by foot-and-mouth disease near Wigton, Cumbria, on 15 April 2001
AP
20/26 April 2001
A cow is lowered onto a burning pyre near the Scottish village of Ecclefechan on 21 April 2001. The government is claiming it is winning the battle to stamp out foot-and-mouth disease after culling hundreds of thousands of livestock across Britain
AP
21/26 April 2001
Burning cattle carcasses in a field outside Kirkpatrick-Fleming on the first day of the crisis, which showed no new cases of the disease in Dumfries and Galloway
Colin McPherson
22/26 April 2001
Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food plot the progress of foot-and-mouth. The map behind them shows Cumbria
Tom Pilston/The Independent
23/26 April 2001
Members of the Oakland Park community farm await Ministry of Agriculture officials at the blocked gate on 5 April 2001. They are surrounded by confirmed cases of foot-and-mouth and are opposed to a cull of their animals
Tom Pilston/The Independent
24/26 May 2001
Sarah, Catherine and their father Michael Bolton at the entrance to their farm in Sawley, near Clitheroe. They have just had their 200 dairy cows and 21 sheep slaughtered
Tom Pilston/The Independent
25/26 August 2001
An auction worker herds two cows around the sales ring at the first cattle auction in the UK since the outbreak, amid tight bio-security measures at the Orkney Auction Mart in Kirkwall
PA
26/26 August 2001
Cattle-buyers wearing protective suits appear in good spirits at the start of the first cattle auction in the UK
PA
1/26 February 2001
Around 150 dead cows that may have come in contact with foot-and-mouth disease are burnt on a funeral pyre at Great Warley Hall farm in Great Warley, Essex, 27 February 2001. The farm is just miles from Little Warley, where signs of foot-and-mouth disease were first found
Rex Features
2/26 February 2001
Cheale Meats workers disinfect their boots after leaving their facility in Brentwood, Essex, where the outbreak started
Tom Pilston/The Independent
3/26 February 2001
Ministry of Agriculture officials survey the burning of livestock carcasses at Heddon-on-the-Wall farm in Northumberland on 26 February 2001 following an outbreak of foot-and-mouth. Two further outbreaks of the virulent disease have been discovered in Wiltshire and Devon
Reuters
4/26 February 2001
Officials from the Ministry of Agriculture start work on a pit for the slaughter of 600 pigs at a farm near Heddon-on-the-Wall, Northumberland
Reuters
5/26 February 2001
The carcasses of hundreds of culled animals being prepared to be burned at Burnside Farm in Heddon-on-the-Wall, Northumberland, on 25 February 2001
PA
6/26 February 2001
Paul Cheale, director of Cheale Meats, talks to the press outside his farm in Essex
Tom Pilston/The Independent
7/26 February 2001
Officials from the Ministry of Agriculture begin to dump pigs and cows into an incinerator at a farm near Heddon-on-the-Wall on 25 February 2001. A probable new outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease has been found in southern England, meaning the highly contagious livestock disease has spread the length of the country
Reuters
8/26 March 2001
Slaughtermen move in to finish off sheep affected by foot-and-mouth disease on a farm near the village of Unthank in Cumbria on 23 March 2001. The overall number of condemned animals now stands at 435,491, meaning Britain is now just hours away from officially declaring the current outbreak more damaging than the 1967 crisis
PA
9/26 March 2001
A funeral pyre of slaughtered cattle and sheep burns in a field near Edenhall at Penrith, Cumbria, on 21 March 2001, as officials struggle to contain the outbreak
Colin McPherson
10/26 March 2001
Cow carcasses waiting to be burned on 3 March 2001
PA
11/26 March 2001
An Irish soldier and Garda (Irish police) officers man a roadblack at the County Louth border, close to the town of Dundalk in Ireland. The Irish government in recent days sent hundreds of extra soldiers to the border with Northern Ireland to set up checkpoints at all roads around the infected area in North Louth, where Ireland’s first outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease occurred
AP
12/26 March 2001
A lorry is disinfected after leaving a farm in Ramsbury, Wiltshire, where there have been cases of foot-and-mouth and where the animals have been destroyed
Tom Pilston/The Independent
13/26 March 2001
About 600 sheep from France and Great Britain are burnt as a precaution against the spread of foot-and-mouth disease at a farm in Bondues near Lille, northern France, on 5 March 2001
AP
14/26 March 2001
Geoffrey Miller at his farm gate in Dorset
Tom Pilson/The Independent
15/26 March 2001
Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother walks on a mat that has been disinfected as a precaution against foot-and-mouth disease, as she arrives at Sandown Park in Surrey for the racing on 10 March 2001
PA
16/26 March 2001
A pig farm in Oxfordshire
Tom Pilston/The Independent
17/26 March 2001
Dead sheep are carried away to be incinerated after they were killed in a slaughterhouse in Aubervilliers, north of Paris, on 2 March 2001. France has had no reported cases of the disease since it began on British farms and slaughterhouses, but the country plans to destroy more than 50,000 at-risk sheep as a precaution
AP
18/26 March 2001
The burning pit at a farm where animals were affected
PA
19/26 April 2001
A tree is silhouetted by a large burning pyre of livestock infected by foot-and-mouth disease near Wigton, Cumbria, on 15 April 2001
AP
20/26 April 2001
A cow is lowered onto a burning pyre near the Scottish village of Ecclefechan on 21 April 2001. The government is claiming it is winning the battle to stamp out foot-and-mouth disease after culling hundreds of thousands of livestock across Britain
AP
21/26 April 2001
Burning cattle carcasses in a field outside Kirkpatrick-Fleming on the first day of the crisis, which showed no new cases of the disease in Dumfries and Galloway
Colin McPherson
22/26 April 2001
Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food plot the progress of foot-and-mouth. The map behind them shows Cumbria
Tom Pilston/The Independent
23/26 April 2001
Members of the Oakland Park community farm await Ministry of Agriculture officials at the blocked gate on 5 April 2001. They are surrounded by confirmed cases of foot-and-mouth and are opposed to a cull of their animals
Tom Pilston/The Independent
24/26 May 2001
Sarah, Catherine and their father Michael Bolton at the entrance to their farm in Sawley, near Clitheroe. They have just had their 200 dairy cows and 21 sheep slaughtered
Tom Pilston/The Independent
25/26 August 2001
An auction worker herds two cows around the sales ring at the first cattle auction in the UK since the outbreak, amid tight bio-security measures at the Orkney Auction Mart in Kirkwall
PA
26/26 August 2001
Cattle-buyers wearing protective suits appear in good spirits at the start of the first cattle auction in the UK
PA
But yesterday the weekly auction was back as a venue for socialising, with groups of farmers in small huddles exchanging laughs and stories as they watched their livestock fetch prices comparable to those before the epidemic.
The first cattle to be sold, a group of four Charolais steers from the outlying island of Westray, sold within seconds at 10am to a buyer for Kepac, a meat supplier in Buchan, Aberdeenshire, for £614 a head.
Cattle sales are permitted only in Orkney, Shetland and the Western Isles at present, but a relaxing of the restriction from 1 September will allow sheep and cattle to be auctioned in the official disease-free area, which takes in all of Scotland except the Borders and Dumfries and Galloway.
How the crisis spread
20 February: outbreak at Cheale Meats abattoir in Essex and adjoining farm confirmed after vet finds boils on pigs
21 February: government and European Commission ban meat, livestock and milk exports from Britain
22 February: walkers banned from farmland. Fox hunting suspended
23 February: six outbreaks confirmed
24 February: slaughter of livestock begins
27 February: agriculture minister Nick Brow, announces £200m compensation for farmers
1 March: outbreaks in Northern Ireland and Scotland confirmed. Cost of epidemic put at £2.6bn
8 March: more than 100 cases. Chief veterinary officer Jim Scudamore says outbreak will last ‘for a long time’
13 March: first case in France. US and Canada ban European exports
15 March: Brown announces ‘pre-emptive cull’ of 150,000 non-infected animals
22 March: first case in Ireland. About 50 new cases reported daily
28 March: Blair asks public to visit rural areas to limit cost to tourism
2 April: Blair announces general election will be held on 7 June
23 April: suspected case of human catching virus
25 April: Phoenix the calf saved from cull
3 May: Blair says UK is in ‘home straight’ after 1,536 cases and 2.5 million slaughtered
4 May: hundreds of footpaths reopened
7 May: government announces £24m package to help businesses; £625m expected for farmers
5 June: EU lifts Northern Ireland export ban
3 July: cost to tourism put at up to £4bn
18 July: Blair rules out public inquiry
9 August: start of three independent inquiries
20 August: first sale of live cattle since start of crisis, in Orkney islands
At the Kirkwall sale, Jim Walker, president of the National Farmers’ Union Scotland (NFUS), warned that complacency could reignite the epidemic. “We have to remember that foot-and-mouth is still raging across the border in England,” he said. “The last thing we want is for it to start up again in Scotland, because then all the games are off, and we’ve got 3.5 million animals to shift between now and the end of the year.
“We have been through hell and back and this is a small but important step forward. There’s much still to do to get out of the mess that foot-and-mouth has caused and get the farmers back to a kind of normality.”
Steven Metcalf, chairman of Orkney Auction Mart, said: “The social effect of the mart reopening is good news. Early in the outbreak people were frightened to move around and weren’t visiting neighbours or friends. It is a good boost for the morale of agriculture and it is a step nearer to normal trading and normal life.”
Although the slaughter of more than 800,000 animals north of the border has so far limited the number of confirmed cases to 187, Maria Limonci, spokeswoman for the NFUS, said Scottish farmers needed to see export bans lifted. “Around 40 per cent of the sheep produced in Scotland usually go out of the country and at present they have nowhere to go,” she said. “More farmers deal in sheep than cattle, and this was only one sale. It’s a huge step in the right direction but it doesn’t mean things are now OK.
“We have to hope nothing goes wrong in next few days. Having 90 clear days would give Scotland grounds to put forward the proposal to Europe to allow exports to restart.”
In England, continuing restrictions prompted 600 farmers yesterday to demand a public inquiry into the handling of the crisis.
David Handley, head of the pressure group Farmers For Action who spearheaded last year’s fuel blockade, led a protest march from Hyde Park to Downing Street to hand in a petition condemning the government’s policy on dealing with the crisis and the failure to implement a vaccination strategy to prevent the spread of the disease.
Although the turnout was lower than expected, protesters included farmers from foot-and-mouth hotspots in North Yorkshire, Cumbria and Devon and Cornwall.
Up to 3,000 civil servants at the Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs held a one-day strike on 20 August 2001 over pay inequalities that followed formation of the new department
This article first appeared in The Independent on 21 August 2001
