I visited UK's frontline defence against foot-and-mouth disease and it is a disgrace

For governments, disaster management often works in a loop: crisis, lessons learned, lessons forgotten – and crisis again. Examples of this are easy to find but the case that’s been in my mind this week is foot-and-mouth disease, which has reared its ugly head again in Germany.

In the aftermath of the 2001 outbreak here in the UK, we all undertook to learn from the mistakes. Twenty-four years on, however, the Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA), our front-line defence against such outbreaks, has been allowed to wither on the vine by successive governments. Now is the time to fully fund the APHA – so we do not pay a higher price later.

I was first elected to parliament in 2001 and well remember the dread and horror that faced our communities then. It impacted consumers of course – there are few things that are as fundamental to our lives as the food that we eat – but even more so farmers and crofters. The sight and smell of burning livestock is something that no one ever forgets.

A dead water buffalo is removed from a farm in Hoppegarten near Berlin earlier this month after the country's first reported cases of foot-and-mouth disease since 1988 (Picture: Odd Andersen) | AFP via Getty Images

Farm in lockdown

I know the distress felt even by those who did not suffer direct losses. Family friends had a dairy farm in the middle of a hotspot near Lockerbie. They avoided their farm being infected, but only by spending weeks on end in lockdown, picking up food deliveries at the edge of their farmgate and seeing no one.

We were fortunate in the Northern Isles that foot-and-mouth never reached our shores, but we were all-too aware of the vigilance that was needed. Every time I got off a plane or a ferry, my shoes were disinfected – a nuisance perhaps, but necessary.

As it happens, the first live cattle auction in the UK after the outbreak – six months to the day after foot-and-mouth first appeared – was held in the Kirkwall mart in Orkney. It was a test case for the return of animal sales across the rest of the country, and farmers and crofters came from hundreds of miles around, such was the importance of the moment – even if the tweed jackets were covered by protective clothing, boots were sterilised, and there were strict controls in place.

It went to show what could be done once we had learned the lessons to bring down the disease and rebuild trust amongst farmers. We can do it again – if we act now.

Myriad of biohazards

As part of my remit as chair of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, I’ve been to the APHA headquarters in Weybridge. The state of the agency, underfunded as it is, is a disgrace. The people working there are brilliant but they urgently need more resources. The £200 million in funding announced by the Labour government last year is a necessary step, but far from sufficient.

After all, foot-and-mouth is just one of a myriad of biohazards in our ecosystems. Hopefully, this outbreak is a bullet we will dodge but there remains the risk of African swine fever, bluetongue and avian influenza, amongst others.

We have the canary in the coalmine today in Germany. It must be the trigger for more investment in biosecurity. This is our opportunity to break the cycle of disaster management – and be prepared for whatever may come next.

Alistair Carmichael is the Scottish Liberal Democrat MP for Orkney and Shetland