The disease and us

Given the boost in the opinion polls enjoyed by Gordon Brown following the recent floods, a cynic might wonder whether the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in Surrey has been staged in order to give the Prime Minister an excuse to break off his holiday in Dorset and earn brownie points by taking control of a national crisis while David Cameron (who has since called off his own holiday) was lounging around on a Breton beach. That, we concede, is far-fetched, but it is not wrong to wonder whether the nation’s reaction to foot-and-mouth — which is rarely fatal in animals and causes no human symptoms whatsoever — is not a little out of proportion to the threat it poses. Victims of MRSA could be forgiven for asking why the Prime Minister doesn’t make a little more of a fuss about biosecurity in NHS hospitals.

That foot-and-mouth disease generates such fear and emotion is partly down to our national sentimentality towards animals, and partly because the last outbreak of the disease in 2001 was so badly mishandled by the government.