Lessons learned from farm crisis

By Nia Thomas
BBC Wales rural affairs correspondent

Foot-and-mouth memories still raw

The Welsh countryside minister says he is confident lessons on foot-and-mouth have been learned, on the fifth anniversary of the crisis.

Carwyn Jones said: "We now have a system in place to deal with an outbreak should it happen in future."

More than 360,000 animals were slaughtered in Wales in the outbreak.

But the Farmers Union of Wales president at the time of the crisis said he was still feared government would take too long to react.

Vaccination was probably one of the most contentious issues during the outbreak and there are still differing views on the subject.

Emergency vaccination is now part of the contingency plan to deal with any future outbreak and teams should be ready to vaccinate on day five of any outbreak.

Former MEP Eurig Wyn, who co-ordinated the European Parliament's investigation into the epidemic, said vaccination should take place rather than "contiguous culling" if there was another outbreak.

He added: "We don't want these massive pyres throughout the country again. Legislation must be applied stringently."

Bob Parry wants quicker action with any future outbreak

But vet Meurig Evans is adamant that vaccination would not have worked five years ago.

"We were stretched with the manpower to control the disease as it was," he said.

"I don't where the staff or the manpower would have come to be able to vaccinate. It was a matter of staying ahead of disease all the time."

The power to deal with animal health has now been devolved to the assembly and Wales has its own contingency plan.

Responsibility

But former Farmers' Union of Wales leader Bob Parry still has his doubts as to how a future outbreak could be handled.

"I still believe the assembly and the ministry would take too long in reacting," he said.

"Whatever is going to happen in the future I believe that if there is another case of foot-and-mouth those animals, whether they be suspect or positive, should be slaughtered within 24 hours."

But Mr Jones, the Welsh Environment and Countryside Minister, is confident that any further outbreak would be dealt with effectively.

More than 360,000 animals were slaughtered in Wales

He said: "We argue that it was dealt with effectively five years ago. We got rid of it pretty quickly - more quickly than we did in 1967.

"But of course we learn from these things. We now have a system in place to deal with an outbreak should it happen in future."

He also believes that devolving the power to the assembly was an important step forward.

"It makes an enormous difference because the situation we had was that the ministry of agriculture [MAFF] was responsible for dealing with the outbreak and they had no staff in Wales to deal with it.

"They had to use assembly staff and that meant it was unclear - particularly to farmers - who was responsible, whether it was the assembly or MAFF. Now it's the assembly which has the responsibility."