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Alistair McConnachie
writes:
The Foot and Mouth cull was a
crime against creation, and was symptomatic of a heartless,
industrial, factory-style approach to farming, which is utterly
unacceptable. All those who advocated culling were drastically in the wrong.
However, now that the disease is apparently fading, some of these
people are now jumping up with the claim that the cull "worked".
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Moronic "Argument" Number 1 :
"Thankfully we avoided Foot and
Mouth because they culled all the animals in the next county."
To see how idiotic this is, substitute the phrase "Thankfully our
children avoided TB because they killed all the children in the next
county."
The fact is: there are easier and less harmful ways of avoiding
TB -- and if your concern was to avoid your animals catching Foot and
Mouth, then there were easier and less harmful ways of avoiding it.
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Moronic "Argument" Number 2 :
"The animals were going to be killed anyway, so why bother?"
We're all going to die eventually. That's not an argument to kill us now.
Anyway, not all the animals were bred to be slaughtered. Breeding ewes and cows, in natural environments, have a natural lifespan. For example, Suckler Beef cows, that is, cows which give birth yearly in completely natural conditions, to calves which are fattened and eventually sold for slaughter, will usually live for around 10 years themselves - although 14 years is not uncommon, and some reach 20 years, giving birth to new life every year. Unfortunately, modern dairy cows, on the other hand, are usually subject to fairly intensive conditions and rarely last beyond 7 years old. Breeding ewes have 8 years ahead of them.
The farmer's job is to rear these animals, to nurture them. It is not to watch them killed unnecessarily.
Just as harvesting a field of carrots is different from deliberately vandalising them while they're growing, similarly slaughtering an animal for food is different from killing it before it's ready.
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Moronic "Argument" Number 3 :
"The trauma which hit the countryside was a natural disaster, entirely due to Foot and Mouth disease."
Wrong, wrong, wrong. The trauma which hit the countryside was unnatural and due entirely to the man-made response to FMD, and not the disease itself. A policy of vaccination, or even in some cases allowing the disease to run its course, would have allowed the countryside to function as normal and FMD would, almost immediately, have become just like any other animal disease which the public never hears about and doesn't care about. Almost all the trauma would have been entirely avoided.
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