Memorandum submitted by Ms Joanna Wheatley
(SFS 51)
INQUIRY INTO
FOOD SECURITY
TO 2050
I am a beef farmer, and have owned and solely
managed a beef herd since 1984 when I inherited my father's
farm. My father had been unable to use many chemicals because
they affected his breathing. I enjoyed the extra wildlife that
afforded my acres so continued in the same vein. I also stopped
buying in cattle and increased the herd solely by selecting the
best female calves. This action effectively stopped me introducing
infective diseases and parasites which enabled me to relax on
routine worming and vaccination, none of the cows on my farm now,
have ever been wormed or vaccinated, and are completely healthy
and fertile. Apart from being more fertile they grow fitter and
faster than neighbours do, and I only feed my own meadow hay in
the winter.
When I left school I worked as a research scientists
developing Organo Phosphate [OP] pesticides, so have had the benefit
of experimental scientific training. This meant I questioned and
rationalised rather than just followed the set trend, being raised
on a farm I had good common sense, you cannot fake things in the
real world, it's actual, life or death profit or loss, it's not
an experiment that you throw away and write up.
I became aware of the cavalier attitude of most
farmers to chemical usage through being chairwoman of the local
branch NFU. Cavalier promotion, plus inadequately dangerous warnings
on containers, even the spouts of canisters would run back on
to overalls, this situation has improved but the general farmer
is addicted to the chemical quick fix, trapped like a hamster
in a wheel.
In this position and regional livestock representative
plus my mother has a neurological disease [never before had a
neurological disease been considered infectious] I took a keen
interest in BSE. Culminating in attending and closely following
the BSE Inquiry, I went supporting the overuse of OPs theory but
had to reconsider when I heard evidence about the use of injectable
bovine based pharmaceuticals. With regard to BSE the specific
use of growth and fertility hormones obtained from cadaveric pituitaries
which have a history when injected directly into the same species
of causing in humans CJD that became my greatest concern.
We are injecting cattle with the remains of
other cattle, humans too, surely this is risky and should be acknowledged
in risk assessments and monitored.
Furthermore what standards are these animals
farmed to?
I consider the way I raise my cows to be the
purest you could get and worthy of being a pharmaceuticals herd.
As far as my MP, Adam Afriyie, and I can establish there is no
such thing, even worse there seems to be no traceability as to
where this material has been sourced. Whereas with food and feed
the area is burgeoning with legislation leading to an unsustainable
use of imported Soya and the like. The same expensive anomaly
has arisen with pigs they all have to be fed expensive high protein
cereals lest they become contaminated with Foot and Mouth [FMD].
In the rest of the world these restrictions do not apply. But
these pigs could have got the disease through contaminated injectables;
this situation is never checked.
Unless these loopholes are addressed we will
continue to have uncontrollable outbreaks of diseases such as
FMD, BSE, TB, to name only the most costly of transferable diseases
by this route.
There is no legislation covering the collection
of these valuable items at the abattoir although there are very
expensive veterinary officials supposedly overseeing disease contamination.
However with the best will in the world they cannot detect microscopic
infection, this can only be achieved by routine microscopic testing
of material, not by the vets who can be users of these materials,
thus have an intellectually corrupt position.
Hygiene rules are completely different now to
how they were thirty years ago, to the financial burden of livestock
producers. It may even be to pharmaceutical standard, these materials
are certainly leaving the abattoir, although the farmer receives
no recompense or generally has any knowledge of such uses.
In order for the survival of livestock production
in this country the above needs to be rectified.
Here is a list of the most important:
Open and accountable systems must be established
so integrity can follow.
Pharmaceutical herds established with the farmer's
knowledge and acceptance for which he should receive recognition
and payment.
The animals are transported to a designated abattoir
that needs to have all the extra measure suitable for this trade.
The extra measures required for pharmaceutical standards should
be borne by the recipients of the materials.
An audit trail should be established from the
abattoir to the end use, including research materials, being logged
along the way. So if contamination should happen it can be traced
right back through the chain.
Absolutely no animals used in research of any
kind should enter an abattoir, thus eliminating the ability to
recycle and spread disease. These animals should be dealt with
on site.
With regard to chicken production I am on less
sure ground, but I do know for a fact that vaccines are grown
in fertile eggs. I also know that salmonella and new strains of
E coli which can give a very unpleasant tummy upset if ingested,
a situation which animals have been coping with since the beginning
of time, it can be expelled rapidly from the digestive tract.
Not so if injected, there is no rapid expulsion method, hence
the infection will be very serious.
Again are the producers aware that this is the
trade that they are supplying?
If they are supplying this trade, they also
should ease back on chemical use. Specifically OPs which may not
only be in high residue in the grain they eat but also used as
a douse for parasite control and their houses fumigated for 24 hours
air control for flies etc. giving continuous dosing to the chicken
that may provoke first signs of poisoning, flu-like symptoms.
[As identified in Health and Safety Executive [HSE] Medical Statement
[MS] No 17.]
Could this be the route of Bird Flu?
I also know the OP grain treatment Pirimiphos
Methyl can mutate E coli, thus forming new strains. A nightmare
scenario for the farmer, all animals have E coli benignly living
in their guts, surely if OP treated food is ingested then new
strains are bound to occur.
The same affliction may be catastrophically
affecting dairy herds, who have to be fed cereals because of the
BSE regulations before mentioned.
The move towards Genetically Modified pharmaceutical
replacements should not be hasty as these also usually have an
animal base, which has been cloned. Still presenting the opportunity
to create immune system rejection effects, which are bound to
happen when injecting tissue within species, and unless you are
going to administer anti-rejection drugs for the rest of the animal's
life, which in itself would be unacceptable for food animals.
With direct respect to the questioned posed
at 2.
Unless the above anomalies are addressed and
corrected, meat and milk production of the UK will continue to
become increasingly unsustainable and we will be increasingly
reliant on imports, the quality and consistency of which we are
less able to control. The turnover in cattle is increasing most
dairy cows are burnt out by the age of eight whereas cows used
to last for routinely more than a decade. Chicken and pig finishing
ages have shortened to keep prices competitive but that cannot
continue. Both of these situations occur to the detriment of animal
welfare, contented well-looked after will always "do"
better.
Soil quality will become increasingly
less fertile unless the natural cycles of flora and fauna are
protected and reintroduced where possibly. E.g. applying of nitrates
negates the need for naturally occurring humus. Chemicals inadvertently
also kills more than the target, i.e. weedkillers also kill beneficial
plants like clover, a natural way to return nitrogen back to the
earth. Fungicides also kill natural mycelium in the soil, some
of these assist root hairs in their uptake of nutrients.
Livestock reinvigorate the soil; the preservation
of the ability of a rotation to include livestock should be protected
and promoted.
1. Water availability, a humus rich
fertile soil will hold a lot more water than one stripped of life.
2. Marine environment will also suffer
from loss of livestock, as run off will be greater through lack
of natural binding.
3. The science base needs to be reality
based, alongside all the interconnectivity of real life not in
the laboratory under controlled conditions that cannot be replicated
in the outer environment. Nor is there any sustainability than
scientists thinking farmers can be "clean". Soil is
not "dirt" and it can and always has got everywhere,
without causing too many problems.
No treatments should be compulsory for the whole
country, if you treat everything, you lose your inherent reference
point.
Risk analysis should always be unbiased, never
just one professional bodies' pet theory.
Vets should not be considered independent "experts",
the same should be said of any professional body.
Farmers should have routine independent health
checks. Plus the same organisation which sells or licenses a product
should never be associated with investigating an adverse reaction
claim. They are the "canaries down the mine" when it
comes to the effects of chemicals, front line users, therefore
should be monitored. Cancers, diabetes and mental health conditions
to name but a few listed in HSE Guidance note MS 17 and in
Organophosphates and Health. Editors Lakshman Karalliedde, Stanley
Feldman, John Henry, Timothy Marrs. Published by Imperial College
Press ISBN 1860942709. This book should be widely distributed
to GPs and hospitals.
A more holistic view should be taken of science
generally, never forgetting the natural and immensely intricate
symbiosis that has taken millennia to develop.
4. Provisions of training should
also be based in practical learning in farm situations, with more
bias on observation, which should override the textbook, because
everything is variable and should never be shoe horned to fit
a scientist's vested point of view.
5. Trade barriers should be in place
to protect our agriculture, this is human fuel and as such should
be treated with the greatest reverence. We should protect our
natural bounty of inheritance against all the odds, it is our
collective biggest treasure. Ours is a temperate climate historically,
good at livestock with breeds that have furnished the world. That
base is of world importance and should be maintained.
6. The way in which land is farmed and
managed. Small farms should be encouraged. They can be very
biodiverse thus protecting and saving reservoirs of species that
the supermarket/mass supplies have to lose. Most importantly they
provide a practical skills and knowledge reservoir.
We are experiencing a polarisation of consumers
into the mass market where it is all about price and "delicatessen"
where people are prepared to pay for local environmentally produced
foods, which can protect all the above. Local food networks are
completely sustainable and should be encouraged.
Defra as it stands at the moment can help to
oversee most of the above, however I'm not sure about the Food
Standards Agency [FSA] which, through the arm of its Meat Hygiene
Agency [MHA], has a lot of legislative control in abattoirs. There
should be a separate agency to oversee the responsibilities for
pharmaceutical material, after all the FSA is supposedly a food
agency.
If required I can substantiate all of the above
with evidence.
Joanna Wheatley
January 2009
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