| Dr Alan Long, Hon Research
Advisor to VEGA, which includes farming, food, health, and the
land in its purview, challenged the BSE Stakeholder Group of
the Food Standards Agency (FSA) today on the following urgent
preparations for meeting claims arising out of the BSE disaster
and preparing precautions for the future.
1. Indemnity claimants for harm done by imposing VAT (above
0%) on all products deriving from the live/deadstock industry
(unless it can urgently impose levies for the same purpose).
2. Prices of animal-derived foods will rise to “real”
amounts at the till; consumption will decline, so the FSA
should prepare advice for British consumers on nutritionally-beneficial
essentially plant-based opportunities, extending the five-a-day
fruit-and-veg message with further lessons from the esteemed
Mediterranean and oriental repertoire of alternatives to animal
derived foods.
3. “…. I am a great eater of beef, and I believe
that does harm to my wit” (Sir Andrew Aguecheek, Twelfth
Night; Or What You Will (I, iii, 90).
4. Alan Long states:
“Recent research in the genetics and physiology of people
and animals emphasizes that each species and infectious agent
among the transmissible enteropathies must be examined for
its particular spread and distribution. This foretells a long
period of doubt and worry.
“Almost as it was published the report of the BSE Inquiry
has required revised interpretation in the possible spread
and persistence of infection and risk in the farm animals
in the live/deadstock industry.
“Many of these doubts have arisen because feedstuffs
were not confiscated immediately when their baleful effects
were first described and by the ramshackle industry’s
reprehensibly tardy imposition of controls in disposal of
specially risky materials.
“ ‘BSE developed into an epidemic as a consequence
of intensive farming practice’ which ‘proved a recipe
for disaster’ (Report of the BSE Inquiry, Volume 1).
Confusion over the implications of animals such as sheep,
goats, pigs and poultry, as well as farmed deer, fish, ostriches
and wildlife carnivores and scavengers and the involvement
of hunting and the operations of knackers’ yards, has
sharpened to a general distrust of animal products from debased
husbandry connived at by farmers, ‘custodians of the
countryside’, and the veterinary profession, and by a
trade purveying meretriciously cheap food.
“Farmers expect government to cover the insurance –
at £ billions – by which they should be responsible
to indemnify themselves against the damage they have wrought
by their incompetence and the harm they have caused consumers
up to now and possibly many more to come. Ultimately the customer
must pay. Farmers having to pay their own insurance will take
care. Insurers will see to that and exert – as producers
and vendors of goods appreciate – their own form of policing.
The government cannot continue to rescue the industry from
the outcome of foreseeable follies.
“The live/deadstock industry has been milking the government
for subsidies and grants that can be cultivated more profitably
than returns from the market. The environment has been harmed;
animals have been relentlessly ill treated, notably in the
deplorable exports of lambs and sheep, and in the disposal
and marketing of surplus dairy-calves, as well as in the now
traditional intensification of the pig and poultry industries
(and farmed fish) and the feeding of recycled offals from
these disgusting practices. Trust in medical products and
practices has been grievously compromised.
“The FSA’s stakeholders include some whose industrial
record indicates an inglorious “war” on the consumers’
side in the battles chronicled by the BSE Inquiry. The FSA
must now insist that the live/deadstock industry meets its
own responsibilities in claims against it. It must compensate
the human families for the ‘recipe for disaster’
it provided for the victims it so lamentably harmed.
“Meat, eggs, milk, and fish must cost more at the till
to recoup these expenses. The government could recover some
of the billions it has paid already by slapping VAT on these
products; otherwise the industry must generate from levies
the means to meet existing and future claims.
“The FSA’s mission to consumers/customers would
be served by guidance into health-giving alternatives for
diets directly plant-based and, in palatable Mediterranean
and oriental styles, reinforcing the five-a-day messages encouraging
consumption of fruit and veg. Opportunities for healthy agriculture
would burgeon too.”
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