The Department for Rural Affairs (DeFRA) are in the headlines today for negligence in it's Pirbright laboratories.
It is estimated that the cost of the Foot and Mouth outbreak in August 2007 is some where in the region of £100 million pounds, if not a few squids more.
In the BBCi report is states that:
"Two official investigations into the outbreak concluded that the most likely sources of the foot-and-mouth virus were two nearby laboratories at Pirbright which stocked samples of the same form of virus that had infected local animals.
These were the Institute for Animal Health, which is a publicly-funded research organisation, and Merial Animal Health Limited, a privately run vaccine production company.
The inquiries also criticised the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) which is responsible for running the Pirbright site.
It emerged that Defra knew the two laboratories considered the old effluent drains ought to be renewed. Defra was at the time responsible for inspecting the laboratories.
The 14 farmers are alleging that the Laboratories and Defra are jointly and severally responsible for the losses they incurred as a result of the outbreak which total about £1.5m."
One poor farmer had to have all his animals killed by Defra vets (totalling 362 calves, sheep, piggies and cattle) as a precaution as it was thought his animals had come into contact with infected cattle. This was not the case- but they went ahead and did it anyway. He had started his business some 14 years previously and has had to start from the beginning. His estimated cost was in the region of £100,000- although the compensation that he received was no where near this amount.
The fact that the Government and Defra are denying these charges is atrocious. TWO investigations has held them culpable and yet they are still in denial. Apparently they knew full well that the live virus was contained in effluent coming from the drains in these labs and knew the drains were inefficient- and yet they still allowed the labs to continue their work. Now, I'm no expert on this and I'm not overly certain what they were doing in these labs. I can only surmise that they were using the virus in order to create a vaccine to protect against outbreaks. But if this is the case- all they have managed to do is spread it.
We have already seen Government errors in losing databases etc, and now it seems that they are responsible for losing/ causing an outbreak of a potentially dangerous virus. God knows what else they are doing in the Government laboratories across the country. What if such a case happened whilst they were playing around with something like Anthrax? or a leak whilst mucking around with Sarin? or even the deadly strain of Bird Flu?
So once again, even though we the tax payers are paying to ensure such outbreaks do not happen- we are once again going to be paying to bail out for another fuck up. Don't get me wrong, I am not disagreeing that the farmer's need compensation and they should be getting what they deserve. But if the government just got it right the first time, then we wouldn't be in this mess.
To read the full BBCi report, you can find it here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7675616.stm
Luna Pixie
< : )
