"The compensation being offered to farmers is totally inadequate," said Bob Robertson, a grain farmer active in the farm protest organization Farmers For Action. "Farmers won't be able to replace stock with the money that is offered and the compensation does not take into account the associated expenses of raising cattle."

The disease, thought to have originated at a farm in Northumberland, spread across England, Wales, and Scotland in a matter of days, then to Germany, and is likely to reach other parts of Europe. Livestock on a number of farms have been killed and incinerated. Exclusion zones, areas where traffic is restricted, have been set up around farms where the disease has been reported.

Governments across Europe have begun to slaughter livestock that was recently imported from Britain, and the European Union (EU) has banned exports of livestock from the United Kingdom. Reflecting the panic among capitalists across the continent, an article in the French big-business daily Le Monde described the outbreak as the "gravest sanitary alert in Europe in 30 years."

Under pressure, the government has said it will offer payments to farmers whose livestock is killed, but it has so far refused to offer compensation to farmers for losses incurred as a result of its decision to close all farmers' markets for three weeks and to ban exports of livestock indefinitely.

Foot-and-mouth disease, eliminated in Europe for decades under a mandatory vaccination program, is a virus that affects hoofed animals. It can spread rapidly and be carried for miles by the wind, leaving animals with blistered feet and mouths. Most animals that contract the disease do not die, but they do not put on weight during the several weeks they have the disease and farmers are less able to market it later. Foot- and-mouth rarely passes to humans and is not fatal when it does. In a recent article in the London Times, scientist Abigail Wood wrote, "Foot-and-mouth is as serious to animals as a bad cold is to human beings." Britain was the first country in the EU to stop compulsory vaccination, a move that was followed by other EU countries in 1990.

Farm income as a whole in the United Kingdom slumped by 27 percent during the last year alone, reaching its lowest level in 60 years, according to government statistics. In particular, farmers have been hit by a decline in prices they receive from food processing and distributing companies for milk and cereals, and by increasing costs of fuel and fertilizer. These high prices and taxes on fuel were the focus of a wave of protest by farmers here at the end of last year.

"We have lost a third of all family farms in the past decade," said Michael Hart, a Cornish beef and sheep farmer who also works for £4.50 an hour as a truck driver (1£=US$1.47). "There are still 100,000 [farms] under 120 acres, but more and more farmers are going part-time just to survive." Hart is a leader of the Small and Family Farm Alliance. An estimated 42,000 farmers and farm workers in the United Kingdom have left farming over the last two years.

The National Farmers Union estimates that £50 million will be lost every week by farmers as a result of steps taken to wipe out the disease. Some £30 million a month in income will be lost by farmers who use their farms as bed-and-breakfasts in order to make ends meet. "The real impact of the crisis is being underestimated," said Robertson, who was forced to sell off his dairy operation last year. "The actual effect on the rural economy is devastating. All sorts of dependent businesses are being threatened, like a local equestrian supplies business that will lay off all its workers next week."

More than 500 workers at two meatpacking plants in northeast England have been laid off as a result of the restrictions on the sale of livestock. Working people will also be affected by meat shortages and higher prices at supermarkets.

The government in London has utilized the crisis to severely restricted the right of movement of working people in rural areas, including granting emergency powers to local authorities to suspend access to footpaths. At Highampton in Devon, cops were deployed to prevent access to a farm where incidence of the disease had been reported.

A local farmer told the Guardian newspaper he worried about a "fortress mentality" developing. In British-occupied Northern Ireland, the government deployed troops at the Irish border and the Royal Ulster Constabulary arrested a local sheep dealer for allegedly smuggling sheep bought in England.  
 
Blaming the farmers
Some articles in the big-business press have tried to smear individual working farmers for the crisis. The outbreak is alleged to have started at Burnside Farm in Northum-berland that is run by Ronnie and Bobby Waugh.

The Daily Mail printed anonymous, unsubstantiated, and unscientific claims that the farm had been "the subject of numerous complaints about the standards of [animal] husbandry, the ramshackle state of the farm, and the foul smell that hangs over the [nearby village of] Heddon-on-the-wall."

"You cannot blame farmers for this," Robertson explained in an interview. "Foot- and-mouth disease is a bug. The truth is we do not know where it came from and it has just as likely come from the abattoirs [slaughterhouse]," he said.

Farmer John Lawrence, also from Kent, explained, "The press treatment of the Waugh brothers is bias; they don't give the full picture. Even if the farm in North-umberland is farmed badly, it is government policies that have forced farmers to farm in bad conditions. The profits that agribusiness make are obscene. The price of fertilizer has doubled recently, but farmers cannot expect to get more for their produce when they sell it."

Paul Davies is a member of the Transport and General Workers' Union in London.
 
 
Related article:
Farmers discuss crisis at national convention  
 
 
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