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Farming Industry 'has much to answer for'
“Government may not have got everything right, but the
industry has much to answer for,” declared the vice chairman,
David Drew, of the commons environment, food, and rural affairs
committee, in a letter written on 12 April 2002 from the House
of Commons to one of his constituents, John Berkley, of Stroud,
Glos, a leading landowner in the county, who had written to
him calling for a public enquiry into the foot-and-mouth crisis.
Farmers’ leaders were “shocked and concerned”
at Mr Drew’s utterances (Daily Telegraph, 26 April 2002).
The letter was condemned as “deeply offensive to all
farmers” and betrayed “ignorance as well as prejudice”
of rural affairs among Labour MPs (David Drew is chairman
of the Labour Group of Rural MPs).
Conceding that “there should have been a full inquiry,”
Mr Drew added that it should “look at all the factors
that caused foot-and-mouth, including poor husbandry, over-intensive
methods, and deliberate spreading of the disease.” He
alleged that farmers made fraudulent use of EU production
and environmental payment schemes, and he has stood by every
comment in his letter. “I do not think it is insensitive.
The outbreak took place on the scale that it did because of
the sheep subsidy and the way that farmers exploited it,”
he stated.
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