Culpable negligence
IN all the massive coverage of the footand-mouth disaster two pretty important questions have faded conveniently into the background: where did it really come from and how was it imported? Let us knock right on the head the DC theory — deliberate conspiracy. This is rubbish. The government is desperately trying to promote its own GA theory — genuine accident. This is an Act of God. No it isn't. The Almighty had nothing to do with it. As a second string to the bow, the government trails a chain of red herrings across the muzzles of a largely acquiescent press.
Canard one: this came from certain filthy farms plus industrial farming methods. Not true. FMD is not endemic to Britain; it has to be imported. Canard two: it came in a dirty truck driven by a rogue dealer. How convenient, for we will never find him. Canard three: it must have come in slops from oriental airlines, used as pig swill. Nice and neat, just an accident. Canard four: it is now down to a dodgy Chinaman, say the government spokesmen.
Now let us look at the third theory, the only one that stands up to the known facts and the laws of the iron god of logic. The key is that there are seven variants of the FMD virus and ours is a particularly rare strain in the West: the Pan Asian strain. I understand it has never appeared before now west of the Twentieth Meridian. Last September an oriental freighter docked near Durban and offloaded buckets of kitchen scraps. The infected meat was used as pig swill locally, and the virus began to rage across South Africa, a major exporter of cheap meat to Britain.
As soon as it was spotted the disease was reported to the world authorities, including the EU and thus Britain. A question the government must answer, and the opposition must somehow force them to, is: how many cargoes of South African meat and derivatives reached these shores after notification of the Pan Asian strain appearing there? And if any, in heaven's name why?
I have already heard the excuse that cargoes were not stopped because London was satisfied that the local authorities were 'coping'. Without wishing to be rude to South Africa, you cannot cope with a pestilence as aggressive as Pan Asian FMD in that vast country. Importing unchecked Third World meats was always a time bomb waiting to explode. Well, now it has exploded. But did the government set the timer through sheer negligence? It is beginning to look so.
Frederick Forsyth
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