By Anne-Marie Williams

The reactions to the Foot and Mouth crisis are a sad reminder of the ease with which life can be disregarded once it has been defined as being a menace. Sheep all around the United Kingdom are being slaughtered in order to prevent the spread of the Foot and Mouth virus. This slaughter could be perhaps considered reasonable if it were a measure taken solely against sick animals, but alas, perfectly healthy animals are also killed in what has become a sheep holocaust.

Paul Harris, Sunday October 7, 2001
The Observer

Criminal gangs are making millions of pounds from the sale of highly contaminated meat that is putting the lives of thousands of people at risk, police have revealed.
Officers from at least five forces have launched joint investigations with environmental health officials into the illicit trade of 'laundering' meat destined for the pet food industry or destruction.

There is evidence the mass slaughter of animals due to the foot and mouth epidemic has led to an increase in unfit meat being passed back into the human food chain.

Authorities said rotting and diseased carcasses are bought cheaply and then 'laundered' back into the human food chain. Gangs cut off rotting sections of meat, including cancerous growths and abscesses, and sometimes dye the meat white again by soaking it in a bucket of salt water and a non-toxic dose of bleach.

The criminals obtain false documentation that will claim the meat is legitimate. They make deliveries at weekends or at night to avoid health inspectors. The unfit meat can contain bacteria such as campylobacter and salmonella, potentially lethal food poisons.

Last month police and environmental health officials raided a Norfolk farm and found nine tons of rotting meat, including two dead foxes. The farm had no hot water, the meat still bore traces of fur, and rat droppings littered the floor.

The meat was not fit for pet food, but inspectors believe it was destined for the dinner table. 'I have never seen anything like it in 40 years of food hygiene enforcement,' said Granville Smith, chief environmental health officer for South Norfolk.

Meat scheduled for pet food can be bought for as little as 30p per pound, but if doctored and sold back into the human food chain it can fetch as much as £2 per pound. One Rotherham gang netted several millions in three years.

'There is a lot of money to be made,' said Yunes Teinaz, a senior environmental health officer in Haringey, London. Teinaz's team has made 30 confiscations in the last four months and obtained 21 court orders ordering unfit meat to be destroyed.

One target of the illegal meat traders is halal butchers, whose network of small family-owned shops is run by owners with little formal trading.

A new campaign, spearheaded by London's Regent's Park mosque, has been launched to help traders and consumers spot unfit meat. Leaflets will be distributed and mosque sermons will be used to spread the message.

Public health officials believe the trade in potentially lethal meat will become more widespread following government plans to privatise meat inspection.

Safe Food: Bacteria, Biotechnology, and Bioterrorism (California Studies in Food & Culture)

by Marion Nesle

For months on end, the media had been publishing about the hoof-and-mouth epidemic. About the fear and desperation of farmers and shepherds who saw all their perfectly healthy animals being destroyed. And also about the total lack of understanding from most people for the ruthlessness with which the draconian measures by our Minister of Agriculture, Laurens Jan Brinkhorst, were implemented. And now suddenly it seems as if the crisis is over. The last animals have been put down. The media have turned their focus on other subjects. There's no more news on the hoof-and-mouth disaster. As if nothing happened.
Over 250,000 animals were destroyed in Holland. Most of them were perfectly healthy. The total damages of HMD in Holland according to the Central Planning Office are ƒ2,8 billion. That's more than was expected. This is because so many other branches of industry depend on the agrarian sector, such as transport companies, suppliers, the retail trade and the tourist industry. It's striking that in England as well as in Holland government measures were a grim reminder of cruel regimes of the past.

`The government`
The huge funeral pyres of thousands of British cows, sheep and goats were reminiscent of the dark days of the inquisition in the sixteenth century. The long mass graves for hundreds of thousands of sheep brought back images of the reprehensible murders by the German Nazis. Those who executed these horrors always claim that responsibility lies with `the government`.
Millions of people were butchered due to totalitarian government regulations such as: Ordnung muss sein -and- Befehl ist befehl. Although these infamous words appeared to have been abolished forever immediately after WWII we see them appearing again in another form. Such as recently during the HMD crisis.
Minister Brinkhorst, the enforcer of Euro-agrarian policies and hated by countless Dutchmen for his arrogance is seen by higher management as a 'powerful manager'. He is said to be ruthless but straightforward and above all clear. The Dutch NRC/Handelsblad even printed that Brinkhorst, as a servant to the public cause, deserves a statue because he 'is prepared to defy populism`. We've heard this kind of thing before. It almost always leads to mass graves and other horrors.
Laurens Brinkhorst and all the European authorities do not realize that they have become the high priests of a macabre religion. In this tough-as-nails religion the basis for believing is not mercy, love or compassion, but money, ambition and efficiency. It's the worship of Mammon, chief deity of gross materialism. The prayer book of the Euro-Mammon is filled with new terminology of the Euro-faith, such as profit margins, production standards and export figures. The Brussels psalmbook sings praise to production result vetoes, factory farming and cost-benefit-analyses.

It hardly gets through to the super managers that living animals in this system are reduced to things, products, objects or units. They often have no personal connection to agriculture, animals or farmers. They manage everything from behind their desks and are not the least bit interested in the sorrow of so many people. History has shown, however, that any form of cultural ruthlessness will eventually always turn around on people themselves. With the same ease with which hundreds of thousands of animals were destroyed on economical grounds, maybe in future elderly citizens, severely handicapped people, chronically ill people and retarded children will be efficiently removed from society. In this context it's remarkable that Laurens Brinkhorst belongs to the same political party that was singing praises to the law on euthanasia and the suicide pill by Drion just before Easter.
It's baffling that it never seems to be a problem to find people to actually execute unethical measures. Whether it's the management of concentration camps or the destruction of livestock, it never seems necessary to place personnel ads. The press has published some heart-rending pictures of the latest `clearings out`.

For instance the little girl that sobs inconsolably while she embraces her recently killed pet goat, or the pregnant but beautiful deer from the deer camp in Epe that press themselves in panic against the fences of their enclosure. From their furs stick red injection needles that have been shot at them by butchers of the RVV (Public Service for Cattle and Meat) from moving vehicles. And the report of the massacre of the 41 Scottish Highland cows in the Duursche Waarden near Olst shows disgusting cruelty. At dusk, only illuminated by flashlights these beautiful animals were killed with firearms that were way too light. Bleeding profusely and lethally injured, calves were dying in the mud while their still living mothers desperately tried to lick them clean.

A taste of what's in store
It would be another mistake to let these horrors disappear from public attention completely, because the HMD threat is now over and we are cleaned up and ready to go on as before. This was just a taste of the Euro-terror from Brussels that's still in store. Maybe the day approaches that we cannot write about these things by order of the government, just like photographic press was carefully kept away from the clean-ups. Because you and I need to be kept as ignorant as possible. That's easier for Brussels.
Prof. Dr. B. Smalhout

The Dutch Telegraph, Saturday 2nd June 2001

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