Defra got Pirbright wrong and has supressed the information
- From: "Pat Gardiner" <patgardiner@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 14 Dec 2007 11:39:50 -0000
Pat's Note:
Mary C has already reported on this, but a copy for the record and those
that may have missed it. Further comment from Warmwell is repeated at the
bottom.
No wonder the State Veterinary Service has been booted out of Pirbright.
Gordon Brown must be incandescent
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/homeaffairs/story/0,,2227605,00.html
8.30am GMT
Foot and mouth outbreak scientists blame Defra
Pat's Note:
Mary C has already reported on this, but a copy for the record and those
that may have missed it. Further comment from Warmwell is repeated at the
bottom.
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/homeaffairs/story/0,,2227605,00.html
James Sturcke
Friday December 14, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
The Institute for Animal Health laboratory in Pirbright, Guildford.
Photograph: Lewis Whyld/Press Association
The government failed in its attempts to stop the spread of foot and mouth
during the summer, leading to a second outbreak a month later, a report
found today.
Scientists at the Institute for Animal Health in Pirbright, Surrey, said
that culling and biosecurity measures following the discovery of the disease
at a farm in nearby Normandy in August did not stamp out the virus.
The government department in charge of farming, Defra, was wrong to declare
the UK disease-free, the scientists found, according to the BBC.
Official reports following the outbreak, which led to the culling of
hundreds of healthy animals and an export ban on British livestock, found
that the disease probably leaked from laboratories on the site in Pirbright
that the IAH shares with a private vaccine manufacturer, Merial.
An outbreak the following month about 12 miles away near Virginia Water was
not the result of a second leak from the laboratories, the IAH scientists
said, but a re-emergence of the first outbreak that had remained undetected
by authorities.
The IAH scientists today leaked their own report, which was completed in
September, amid frustration that it had not been published by Defra, the BBC
reported.
In August, the prime minister, Gordon Brown, broke off his summer holiday to
take charge of the eradication effort.
From http://www.warmwell.com/
December 14 2007 ~ "culling and biosecurity measures did not stamp out the
virus"
The Guardian this morning reports on the fact that "the IAH scientists today
leaked their own report, which was completed in September, amid frustration
that it had not been published by Defra."
The news release on the BBSRC site says
".... it is possible to establish with considerable molecular precision
which viruses are descendants of which parent viruses. The data have been
peer reviewed by a group of leading scientists at the request of Defra's
Chief Scientific Adviser and are due to published shortly. The independent
expert peer review process has accepted the study's conclusions that the
second phase of the outbreak originated from the first phase and not from a
separate release from the Pirbright site."
In other words, the two outbreaks came from the same source, and it was a
grave error on the part of DEFRA to claim that the first outbreak in August
had been fully eradicated.
As the Guardian spells out this morning, " the outbreak.. led to the culling
of hundreds of healthy animals."
Regards
Pat Gardiner
www.go-self-sufficient.com
.
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