FOOT AND MOUTH

[Stanley]

FOOT AND MOUTH

27 May 2001

It’s not often I sit down to write something that I’d rather not be thinking about but the events of the last two weeks have forced this topic back on me. The recent outbreak of F&M in the Settle area has spread and at the time of writing is in Horton in Craven and Newsholme.
As many of you will know, at one period of my life I worked for West Marton Dairies and picked the milk up from many of the farms in the area. It was bad enough reading about the slaughter in other parts of the country but when the roll call starts to include names like Friar’s Head, Demesne, Stainton Hall and Painley I have to admit that my back hairs start to rise, these are all places I used to pick milk up from or deliver hay and straw.
Things look bad and will get worse. I have been watching the wind direction, for the last five or six weeks the wind has been in the North or the East and watching the spread of the disease, it seemed to be following this track, downwind. However I had missed something. I was talking to a mate of mine, Colin Barritt at Kayfield (on the phone, you can’t spread disease that way!) and he pointed out to me that the pattern of infection was following the rivers. The Ribble rises beyond Settle and the Aire and the Wharfe are fed from the same area.
This makes sense to me. The old farmers round here have regarded May 12th as ‘Grass Day’ for centuries. This was the day when the weather was usually kind enough to allow the cattle that had been snug in their byres all winter to be turned out to grass. If you have a farm that borders on the river, chances are that they will be drinking from it. It makes sense that any infection in cattle upstream will be washed down by the river and any cattle drinking lower down are at risk. This is exactly what has been happening and whilst nobody can be certain, the spread of infection does seem to be following the watercourses.
If this is true, Barlick might stand a chance because we are on the watershed, on the backbone of England. There is no water flowing into Barlick, it all flows out. There is another consequence if this theory is correct, anyone on the banks of the Aire and the Wharfe is at risk. We’ve seen it follow the Ribble, the next places to watch are Skipton, Bolton Abbey and Addingham which lie on these rivers.
As I write this it seems callous to be almost wishing F&M on other places so that we in Barlick can have a chance to survive. It isn’t like this of course, the disease will take its own course and it is natural to hope that we will be spared. Having said this, it won’t necessarily be the best thing. I was talking to my eldest daughter Margaret this morning, she lives in Clitheroe and both she and her husband Mick are very closely connected with the farming community. She was telling me about a friend of theirs who had cattle and was offered a choice by the Ministry of either being culled out as a clean farm or waiting to see if the disease actually struck. He talked it over with his wife and they decided to take the immediate cull. As he said, it ends ten weeks of worry and means that they can start looking to the future.
This might seem like a callous decision but bear in mind that every farmer round here has been in prison for the last ten weeks and has had nothing else to do, beyond the normal work of the farm, but sit watching F&M lay waste to whole communities and wondering if and when they are going to get hit. This is terribly wearing, imagine what you would be feeling like if the firm you were working for told you that they might have to go out of business at a moments notice and they’d let you know the day it happened, and by the way, you’ve to live in the factory until we know what’s happening! The farmers are in exactly that position and have been for almost three months and there is no end in sight.
The government tells us that the epidemic is under control. Of course it suits them to do this, they have other fish to fry, in case anyone hasn’t noticed there is an election in progress. I’m not saying that there is anything they could actually do to help, this is a force of nature we are up against, however I can’t help thinking that a bit more attention and sympathy wouldn’t go amiss. I have a funny feeling that if a disaster on this scale was raging in Westminster we would be hearing rather more about it.
This is certainly the message I am getting from my farming friends when I talk to them. They feel that they are being ignored and I don’t think you would find one that had anything good to say about the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. Indeed, I heard about one man who suspected he was infected and rang the Ministry on Friday night and couldn’t get any response at all. There may have been a good reason for this but he would take some convincing. One thing is certain, many of us think that when the outbreak is finally extinguished, the next candidate for a cull should be MAFF.
So what can we townies do? Not a lot actually, I suppose the biggest contribution we can make to halting the spread of the disease is to recognise that the bans on footpaths and walking dogs are there for a reason and make sure we don’t do anything that could cause any risk. It’s natural to think that we can’t cause any damage because we have never been anywhere near cattle and therefore can’t spread the disease, unfortunately it doesn’t work like that. The milk tanker that picked Taylor’s milk up at Friar’s Head used to pass through Barlick on the way to its next pick-up. So every time you passed over the crossing outside the Post Office there was a chance that you were picking a bit of dirt up off the road on your shoes that had come straight from a farm that proved to be infected. Drop this on a road near a field, a dog picks it up on its paw and runs into a field after a rabbit and you have a chance of passing the infection straight into the local livestock. You can argue that the odds against this happening are enormous but is it worth the chance?
Another useful thing to do would be to take note and recognise how important the local farmers are to us in terms of the maintenance of our environment. Barlick is a ‘walking distance’ town. You can get out into the fields in ten minutes in any direction out of the town centre. Every morning when I go up to Letcliffe to walk the dog I take note of Johnny Simpson and his sons at Bancrofts. You can tell when Johnny gets up, the chimney starts smoking and you can see Alwyn and his brother getting on with the work of milking the cattle and looking after the stock. They have been farming like this for over fifty years and you won’t find a tidier or better run farm anywhere in the district. Anyone coming into Barlick sees their work as they pass but might not notice it and realise what a benefit they are to the town. Imagine what it would be like if the farm was derelict, overgrown and broken down. It would be an eyesore but thanks to the Simpsons it is an asset. We would do well to recognise this and also that this applies to all the other farmed land in the area. So the next time you are held up by a herd of cows on the road stopping you rushing about your business, take a moment to think how lucky you are to be in an area where this is your biggest traffic problem. We have much to be thankful for in Barlick and the farmers are as much a part of the environment as the Town Square or the Library.
Sorry to be so serious this week but we have to be aware all the time of what is important to us and the town. I’ve started work on another big chunk of interviews and the next few weeks will be spent looking at town life in the early part of the last century (It still sounds funny to be saying that!) with particular emphasis on Westgate, Wapping and Colne Road.
Thanks as usual for all the feedback. Apologies to those who got a bit fed up with Bancroft but remember that we are a broad church, lots of people have said how much they enjoyed reading about what used to be their life and I have a sneaking suspicion that a lot of youngsters will be looking at their grandparents in a different light now. That can’t be bad!

SCG/27 May 2001