Farm Virus Toll Grows as Britain’s Economy Hit

With the number of cases rising like flood waters in an unrelenting storm, foot-and-mouth disease has cut a swath of economic devastation through the heart of Britain’s farming and tourism industries in the five weeks since it first appeared at an Essex slaughterhouse, and it now threatens to do the same in continental Europe and Ireland.

The disease that knows no borders has already struck at least 520 farms throughout Britain. Defying police checkpoints and roadway disinfectant mats, it has swept into France, the Netherlands and Ireland.

Prime Minister Tony Blair’s government has said it hopes to contain the epidemic in Britain by May, but according to a report compiled for the Agriculture Ministry, the worst is yet to come. The number of new cases could rise to 70 a day in the next two weeks, with more than 4,000 farms wiped out before June, the report estimates. On Saturday, Blair met with farmers in Devon to discuss what he called a “hellish situation.” He promised that the government will do “whatever is necessary to get on top of the disease.”

But a day earlier, Blair’s own experts weren’t optimistic. “Currently, the epidemic is out of control,” acknowledged Mark Woolhouse, a University of Edinburgh disease expert who contributed to the ministry report.

“In the worst-case scenario,” added David King, the government’s chief scientist on the case, “out of control means that we might even lose 50% of the livestock of Great Britain.”

Here in the Lake District’s divine Eden Valley, the green pastures have been silenced by the slaughter of lambs, sheep and cattle afflicted with foot-and-mouth.

“This is the first time in my life that there has been no spring life here,” said farmer Les Armstrong, whose 1,300 sheep and 500 dairy cows have been destroyed. “It’s so still.”

The landscape of gentle hills and lakes that inspired the romantic brush of the 19th century artist J.M.W. Turner now offers something suitable for Hieronymus Bosch, the Dutch painter famous for his depictions of demons.

Trenches cut ugly scars across vast green pastures. They are filled with bloated sheep and cow carcasses, stiff limbs jutting into the air, then piled with coal and set alight. Flames whip in the wind, and gray plumes of smoke rise up across the countryside, carrying the acrid smell of rot and disinfectant.

As farmers on the Continent looked nervously over their shoulders at the worsening situation in Britain, German and Italian officials announced the first suspected cases in their countries Friday. The agriculture minister of Germany’s largest state, North Rhine-Westphalia, warned that the virus was virtually certain to seep across the border from the Netherlands--a lesson that Ireland has already learned.

“This is a now a national challenge for our country,” said Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern, whose hopes of winning an exception to the U.S. and Canadian ban on European Union meat and dairy imports were dashed Thursday with confirmation of the first outbreaks in his country.

Ireland had taken early and what had seemed to be extreme measures to safeguard its $6-billion-a-year livestock industry from the epidemic. The virus, which normally doesn’t affect humans, clings to clothes and cars and can spread on the soles of a hiker’s boots or the fur of a family dog. So the government canceled St. Patrick’s Day parades and six rugby matches with Britain, banned hunting, fishing and horse racing, closed its famous golf courses and culled farm animals linked to British herds.

But even this turned out to be insufficient protection against a disease that can also travel in the wind. The first cases appeared in the Cooley Peninsula, about 50 miles north of Dublin and across the border from Northern Ireland, leading to the killing of thousands of livestock there.

Most animals do recover from the disease, but because they get blisters on their mouths and feet, they stop eating as much and so do not gain weight; cows’ milk yield goes down.

Britain has slaughtered nearly 300,000 animals that have contracted or been exposed to the disease, and at least 200,000 more already have been condemned in an effort to create “firebreaks” between sick and healthy animals. On Saturday, the government announced that it will slaughter nearly all livestock on farms adjacent to foot-and-mouth infection sites. The cull is more limited than a larger extension of the slaughter that was under consideration Friday, which called for all livestock within two miles of infection sites to be destroyed. Previously, the controversial preemptive slaughter--denounced by animal rights activists--had been limited to Cumbria in the Lake District and the Scottish region of Dumfries and Galloway.

The animals affected so far account for less than 1% of the country’s 60 million livestock, but the economic effects are already huge. Agriculture Minister Nick Brown said foot-and-mouth disease has cost Britain about $250 million so far, and Robin Bell, head of the ministry’s trade team, said that the cost could top $825 million in lost livestock and meat trade by the end of the year.

Economists warned that the price tag would be much higher with tourism included, with estimates reaching as much as $13 billion.

The effects on the Continent depend on the degree to which the disease spreads there and the length of international bans on the import of EU livestock, meat and dairy products. No estimates were readily available, but economists noted that meat prices have increased 10% to 20% in Europe as bans on moving livestock across borders have taken hold, fueling inflation on the Continent.

Crisis Poses Challenge to Europe Central Bank

If this continues, the European Central Bank, which oversees the common European currency, may soon find itself having to decide whether to raise interest rates in a battle against inflation, or to lower them to boost industries facing a global economic slowdown.

In Cumbria, the hardest-hit British county, ash from the funeral pyre falls on Viking-age villages where England still seems to be a nation of shopkeepers--but without shoppers.

“Business is down by 80%,” said Rob Heywood of the Pooley Bridge Inn, a family-owned pub and restaurant with 10 rooms to rent near Ullswater Lake.

He opened his date book to the last week of March, normally the start of the tourist season in an area that receives about 14 million visitors a year, and pointed to a blank page. “No bookings,” he said. “Whether you’re a farmer, a hotel owner, a barman or a waitress, this foot-and-mouth directly affects you.”

At the beginning of the outbreak, the British government warned tourists and “ramblers,” as hikers are called here, to stay away from the countryside so that they wouldn’t contribute to the spread of the disease. English Heritage historic sites, National Trust homes and gardens, royal parks and zoos were closed, along with public foot and bridle paths and much of Britain’s 2,000-mile network of canals.

But as citizens dutifully heeded the advice, rural villages and hamlets began to feel the pain. Business dried up, and soon tourism officials complained that to save the farmers the government was killing an industry worth four times as much as farming.

Realizing it had put lucrative Easter holiday travel at risk, the government then reversed itself and last week launched an advertising campaign in New York to tell the 4 million Americans who usually visit Britain each year--spending about $3.6 billion--that the country is still open for business.

“We desperately don’t want people to cancel their holidays,” Tourism Minister Janet Anderson said in an interview from New York. “It’s perfectly possible to tour the countryside by car and visit towns and villages.”

Tourists Must Watch Their Step Outdoors

Just don’t step off the pavement. Vacationers may go boating on the lakes in the Lake District but not walk around the shores. Many of the National Trust estates have been reopened, but most of the footpaths are closed off like crime sites and posted with “Keep Out” notices.

Chris Collier of the Cumbria tourism office says the region already is losing about $14 million a week.

“The whole supply chain is hit,” Collier said. “Shops--because the hotel business is cutting back on expenditures for supplies--decorators, electricians, plumbers won’t be called to work. Cancellations are coming in, and 350 jobs a week are at risk. A lot of people have been laid off.”

Taxis sit idle. Vacancy signs hang on hotel fronts. Farmhands are laid off, and farmers accustomed to rising at 5:30 a.m. to milk their cows sleep past 7 now before setting about their disinfecting chores. Gallery owners stare at their own wares in the window.

“The last time I saw a customer, well, I don’t know if I should count the milkman, but the last time I took in any money was March 16,” Arne Rumbold of Laburnum Ceramics in Yanwath said five days later.

The disease is a double whammy for farmers who diversified into tourism during the last five years after the outbreak of “mad cow” disease and in the face of the falling prices for farm commodities.

They’re losing their animals and their tourists.

“Farming is our main livelihood, but we can’t sell or move any animals,” said Eileen Tuer, whose Common Farm in Beatrix Potter country, near Windemere, has livestock and a bed and breakfast. “People have rung up to see how we are, but there are no bookings.”

Richard Allen gave up farming his family’s 1,100 acres near Keswick two years ago to develop his Newlands Adventure Center, an outdoor sports facility for students.

“We’re looking at 100,000 pounds [about $145,000] in losses from here to next March,” Allen said as he surveyed the empty grounds.

“This place should be full of 120-odd children,” added his business partner, Steve Beinder.

Instead of hiring employees for the high season, Allen and Beinder are laying off their winter skeleton crew. But Allen warned his colleagues in the tourist business not to pit their interests against those of the farmers.

“Farming and tourism are joined at the hip in this area,” he said. “God gave us the canvas, but the farmer created the picture with sheep in the hills and fields, stonewalls and character.”

Like many in the area, he worried that the epidemic will drive many farmers out of business. The government is compensating farmers for the slaughtered beasts, paying as much as 90% of market value for animals. But they won’t be allowed to replace their livestock until six weeks after the last outbreak in their area, and then they must wait for the animals to reproduce.

If the farmers are able to buy new sheep and cows in the fall, they will have to wait until summer 2002 before they have any lambs and calves to sell. It is 18 months of delayed income that few can afford after the mad cow epidemic that hit the industry in the 1990s, leading to mass slaughter and export bans. The scientific term for mad cow disease is bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE.

“When the BSE crisis hit five or six years ago, British agriculture was a fit young boxer in its prime,” said Richard Morris, who normally values animals for market but now values them for slaughter. “It has gone downhill since then, and now British agriculture is a sick old man. . . . What they’re all saying around here is that farming is finished.”

As with BSE, the foot-and-mouth epidemic is likely to drive smaller farms out of business and contribute to the trend toward large-scale farming in Britain fueled by the demand for ever-cheaper food, analysts said.

This is the trend that many farmers blame for the wide and rapid spread of foot-and-mouth. Livestock dealers have been moving animals from market to market across the country in search of the best prices. When new health regulations were imposed after the BSE outbreak, small-scale slaughterhouses went out of business and livestock were moved longer distances to larger abattoirs.

Its neighbors in Europe are not exactly happy with Britain, which Hugh Byrne, Ireland’s natural resources minister, called “the leper of Europe” even before the epidemic reached his country.

He joined British farmers in criticizing the Blair government for a slow and sloppy response to the outbreak, writing in the Independent newspaper of London that it was as if Agriculture Minister Brown “thought that if he closes his eyes and crosses his fingers, the whole nasty business will go away.”

British farmers have long accused Blair’s government of being out of touch and even hostile to agriculture. They say the government put too few vets onto the case to identify outbreaks and then was too slow to destroy infected herds.

They are also angry with Blair’s reported intention to go ahead with local and national elections May 3. In Britain, the prime minister can decide when to dissolve Parliament and hold a general election. Far ahead in the polls for months, Blair has been aiming for a spring vote, but now he is in a quandary. It might be unseemly to smile and kiss babies while farmers and rural communities watch their income go up in smoke. On the other hand, he might be worried that delaying the vote will send a message of paralysis and crisis at a time when the country is trying to draw back tourists.

Britain’s European neighbors, meanwhile, were taking precautions against the British epidemic after four cases were confirmed in the Netherlands and two in France last week. The Dutch government began emergency vaccinations and culling around contaminated sites and imposed a ban on livestock transports and milk collections from farms. Meat exports were banned.

Germany, which has a suspected case in Lower Saxony, set up border roadblocks to make sure that drivers did not bring meat or dairy products into the country. Police confiscated hunks of Dutch Edam cheese and meat sandwiches.

Sweden canceled its “Food Chain 2001” trade fair for organic farmers scheduled late this month for fear visitors might bring in the disease. Disinfectant mats were laid across roads between Portugal and Spain, and at the exits of aircraft arriving in Italy from Britain. Animal markets were canceled throughout the EU.

In Cumbria, meanwhile, the talk is of how to make it through a spring of smoke--and how to soldier on without the bleating of lambs and rustle of calves.

“Every day I work with livestock, and all of the sudden there’s none,” said Les Armstrong’s son, Martin. “Gone. Nothing.”

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Fields of Slaughter

The outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease was discovered Feb. 20 during a routine inspection of a slaughterhouse in Essex.

Toll: Nearly 300,000 animals that have contracted or been exposed to the disease have been slaughtered in Britain.

Condemned: At least 200,000 more animals have been condemned in an effort to create “firebreaks” between sick and healthy livestock.

Affected Livestock: The animals affected so far account for less than 1% of the country’s 60 million livestock.

Worst-Case Scenario: Britain might lose 50%, or 30 million, of its livestock.

Financial Losses: Combating the disease has cost the nation about $250 million so far, and the cost could top $825 million in lost livestock and meat trade by year’s end. With tourism included, monetary losses could reach $13 billion.

Source: Times reports *

Times staff writers Carol J. Williams in Berlin, David Holley in Warsaw and Jane Engle in Los Angeles, and researchers William Graham in Belfast, Reane Oppl in Bonn, Sarah White in Paris and Janet Stobart in London contributed to this report.