Re: Foot & Mouth Disease (AKA Hoof & Mouth)

[Roger Key <roger.key@onet.co.uk>]

HI All

Interesting thoughts from Paul,


>Currently much talk in the UK is about how the spread of this disease is
>exacerbated by the closure of over 90% of the nation's (mostly small,
>local) slaughterhouses - a direct result of EU legislation to prevent
>CJD through spinal tissue entering the human food chain. A fine example
>of non-systemic thinking. 15 minutes on a solution-effect diagram might
>have predicted this risk.

Stands true for much policy from national, local and supernational
government.  HOwever it was not as a direct result of the EU directive as
we did not have to comply if we did not wish to, after all most of the rest
of Europe, under the same directive have applied it in varying degrees,
mainly only applying it to the biggest abatoirs abd seeking to assist the
small ones to sharpen up their act if needs be.

However:  The restrictions on abatoirs are not just to help stop BSE
getting in the food chain - now there was another non-systems thinkingmess 
up - but also to help address the treat from food poisoning of the various
guises.  Looking at the data we can see that most of this infection comes
from the large abatoirs and that the infection rates and problems posed by
small abatoirs are very low.  ANd if they do get it wrong they also tend to
only impact a small, local, population.  So not only has the solution
exaberated this current problem, it has also caused the removal of the
abatoirs that were not causing the original problem in the first place.

Or the splendours of knee jerk policies......

We do not look for F&M with the vigour that has been done over the past
couple of weeks unless there is an outbreak.  I have been wondering what
the underlying  infection rate is in the animal population that we never
spot because we are not looking.  After all it is not only domestic animals
that get F&M and the massive reaction is not based on health grounds but on
economic and trade rulings that have spurious basis. - The snowball gets
bigger and bigger all the time....

Finally, there is a suggestion that the foot and mouth virus got into the
UK via some infected pig swill that had been shipped from South America to
feed pigs in the UK.  Even if this was not the source of infection, what
kinda dumbass system ships pig swill around the world???



	Roger.

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Roger C. Key 				 mailto:roger.key@onet.co.uk
Prescient - The Whole as One
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