A farmer's perspective on a visit from the MAFF.
 
Until last Monday 12th March, Wynn Gittens was a hard-working dairy herd
farmer, farming 200 cattle and 1350 sheep at Ucheldre Farm, Brooks, near
Welshpool, Wales. But in the space of a single day, his whole life was turned
upside-down

THE VISIT
That . Monday morning, Wynn noticed that a couple of his cows were drooling
at the mouth, and that another was limping slightly. Abiding by the statutory
legislation instructing farmers immediately to report any suspected symptoms
indicating foot and mouth, Wynn called his local vet. He was told that the
vet could not come out, because if the cows in question were suffering from
foot and mouth, then the current quarantine laws would mean the vet could not
visit another farm for the next three days minimum. This would short-staff
the practice. A MAFF official would need to visit. 

A MAFF representative arrived shortly afterwards. Wynn took him to the
cowshed. The official took one look at one of the suspected cows and said,
I don't need to see any more. This cow has got foot and mouth. I need to
use your telephone. A rapid series of calls was then made, the official
informing his superiors and various other officials that an immediate
slaughter of Wynn Gittens' animals be carried out. Some paperwork was filled
in, and another telephone call was made to request the attendance of a
livestock evaluation officer. With the paperwork completed, and the death
sentence process formally initiated, only then did the MAFF representative
take a saliva sample from the only cow he had previously inspected. Within
half an hour of the MAFF official leaving, the livestock evaluation officer
arrived. The evaluation was carried out. A fair figure was arrived at, and
approximately one hour later, the slaughtering began.

One brief visit by a ministry official, one unconfirmed visual diagnosis,
some paperwork, and by early next morning, 200 head of Belgian Blue Cross
cattle, and 1350 Beulah speckled sheep were dead.

FLAGRANT STRAYING FROM PROCEDURE
And it is at this point that we must necessarily examine the Ucheldre Farm
'official visit'. For the evidence points very strongly towards gross
malpractice. At no point was it mentioned to Wynn that a number of other
livestock diseases share the visible symptoms of foot and mouth. The
following link
http://www.oie.int/eng/maladies/fiches/A_A010.HTM
takes us to the OIE official list of livestock illnesses and diseases that
bear similarities to foot and mouth. Said Wynn We just do what the vet
tells us. We're not the experts. But Wynn's government-appointed vet
didn't really tell Wynn anything, except to advise that all his cattle and
sheep had to be killed. Did Wynn's cattle have foot and mouth? It's all a bit
late to tell now. The evidence has long since vanished. No-one has got back
to Wynn with the results of the saliva sample taken by the official as he
left the site. But even if the diagnosis was correct, foot and mouth is not
the serious disease we are being led to believe. Evidence of foot and mouth
in one or two cattle most certainly does not warrant the instant destruction
of 1350 sheep and 200 cows!

On a more serious procedural note, at no point in the visit to Mr Gittens'
farm was any blood taken to confirm the presence of foot and mouth. Not one
single test was carried out independently to confirm the official’s initial
diagnosis.

This is in direct contravention of the procedure as laid out in the MAFF
sister site at the Institutes for Animal Health found at
http://www.iah.bbsrc.ac.uk/Press_releases/FMD%202001.htm
The role of the IAH in the current outbreak of FMD is to support the
on-farm activities of MAFF by providing a laboratory diagnostic service for
establishing the foot-and-mouth disease status of samples taken from animals
suspected of being infected. When tissue and blood samples are received at
the laboratory, tests to identify the presence of virus are set up. If large
quantities of virus are present these tests can yield a positive result
within 4 hours.

The chairman of Montgomery Farmer's Union Wales, Philip Owens, recently
stated, 
MAFF are conducting the slaughter and disposal policy
with such sloppiness, that if their theory on the spread of the foot and
mouth virus is correct, then they will themselves be spreading it
everywhere
. Experiences such as Wynn's has necessitated Owens to
call for a halt to the current policy. Please read his statement here.

But this is only just the beginning of the story of Wynn Gittens' official
visit.

A STINKING PILE
Having slaughtered all 1550 animals at Wynn's farm, officialdom did not make
another appearance again for another two and a half days. Wynn's animals were
left in a huge, stinking pile. The smell was terrible. Says Wynn.
But we couldn't go anywhere. The man from the ministry told us we can't
leave the farm for 21 days.  (More on Wynn's enforced segregation from
the rest of the community a little later.) And then, on the Thursday morning
of that week, a transit van arrived at the farm. The rear door swung open and
17 men of varying ages spilled out into the yard, all reporting for
highly infectious disease clearing up duty.

And that's when the trouble began.
For none of the men could speak any English. And that is because the men
employed for the task of clearing Wynn's farm were all asylum-seekers. Says
Wynn, It was chaos here. All these men, none of whom looked as if they
had ever really done a day's work in their life, were wandering around, not
knowing what they were supposed to do, because none of them could understand
any English. They were all driven up here from Birmingham apparently. By 1pm
that day, the foreman had had enough, and the asylum seekers were all taken
away from the site.  One of the asylum seekers was rather hoping to stay
on, it seems. Said Wynn's mother, One chap approached us, saying, 'Me
work you. You give me bedroom, I work you all the time.' Having now no
livestock with which to work, an offer of employment was of course
impossible. An English-speaking replacement crew arrived on site a little
later that afternoon.

Greyhound Plant Services from Oswestry is the official contractor appointed
by MAFF to supervise the clearing-up duty. Guy Hitchin, the man responsible
for hiring and firing 'the Birmingham 17', would offer no comment on the
above. But telephoning under the pretence of seeking employment, I discovered
that no experience is necessary to handle 'highly infectious diseased carcass
disposal'. I was offered a job at  £5 per hour and Could I drive a
JCB? I would need to find local digs though, as operatives did not stay
on site.

Wynn has to stay on site, but ministry officials and disposal personnel can
arrive in the morning and leave in the evening. They can come and go as they
please. Why can't Wynn go out?

THE INCONSISTENCIES
Since Wynn's official state order to stay put, many officials have been
visiting his supposedly 'highly infectious' premises. A quick calculation,
and currently we have one ministry appointed vet, a Greyhound foreman, a full
English-speaking Greyhound crew plus 17 asylum seekers, all wandering around
the countryside, and all spreading the vicious foot and mouth virus even
further -- if we are to believe MAFF's much-touted virus hypothesis. So
where's the consistency in the official approach to this stick to
anything, airborne, 25 mile radius travelling capacity foot and mouth
virus theory? Surely the virus is clinging just as much to the visitors as it
is to Wynn? When it comes to consistency in this whole affair, there isn't
any. Says the marooned Wynn My neighbours are being very good about all
of this. They're leaving the essentials like bread and milk, etc, at the farm
entrance. Since this has happened, we have had no call from MAFF, no letters
advising us on what to do, and no letters telling us when we can leave the
farm. We're just kind of stuck here waiting, really. And as a thinking
society, should we not all be saying  What the heck is actually going
on here?

A FAMILIAR SMELL
Nothing about this whole foot and mouth affair makes any sense. Nothing
except the smell of death. And it's a very familiar smell. It's not the smell
of Wynn's 'deadstock'. That particular smell has now receded. No, the smell
is the smell of politics. The putrid aroma of self-appointed officialdom,
vested interests and hidden agendas is clinging to every aspect of foot and
mouth. A refusal to answer awkward questions, a
refusal to let opposing views be heard at television press conferences,
the covering up of in-house mistakes, the adherence to outdated slaughter
policy, and a refusal to admit that the science behind the current mass cull
is wholly errant - these are just some of the highly infectious agents at the
heart of this grotesque affair.

MIS-DIAGNOSIS ACROSS THE BOARD
Unconfirmed visual diagnosis is by no means confined to the veterinary
establishment. For those people not yet familiar with the scandal of the
'visual only' AIDS test, the following link at
http://srd.yahoo.com/goo/%22Bangui%2bAIDS%22/3/*http://www.africasia.com/icpubs/na/dec98/nacs1202.htm
will take you to an article written by Baffour Ankomah, editor of 'The New
African'. Entitled Are 26 million Africans dying of AIDS? - the
biggest lie of the century uncovered. we learn that visual
diagnosis for AIDS is being carried out in Africa by official organisations
on a breathtakingly large scale. Just as Wynn's farm and others are being
visited at lightning speed by slipshod officials from MAFF and assorted
contractors, so too are African villages and townships being visited at
lightning speed by officials from WHO, UNAIDS, USAID and related NGO's, who
are rushing in to deliver 'visual only' HIV positive diagnoses upon the
unsuspecting and trusting inhabitants.

These morally outrageous official visits are resulting in thousands upon
thousands of uninfected Africans being falsely diagnosed as HIV positive,
based only on a few outwardly visual symptoms such as 10% weight loss, fever,
and sickness. This is what is known as the WHO (World Health Organisation)
Bangui method of diagnosis. Anyone who knows the malnutrition, malarial and
cholera problems Africa faces will immediately realise the huge potential for
error in visually diagnosing for HIV. Credence Publications is in touch with
various organisations in a number of African countries who tell us that when
given good food, clean water and simple medicines, those people diagnosed
with 'the fatal HIV' recover.

Running alongside these 'AIDS ravaged Africa' stories, we can also read any
number of  unsubstantiated stories of African as insatiable sexual
being. Anyone who actually knows Africa and Africans will know that
these stories are actually vastly exaggerated. And surely, the west is the
last place on the map worthy of lecturing others on sexual morals.

Is any of this reported in the mainstream news? No! Why not?  Because as
always, there are wheels within wheels. (Please see footnote)

FOOT AND MOUTH AND WHEELS
Up until now, Wynn has been trusting of the veterinary superiors. He says,
I just do what the vet tells me. And the vet of course, just does
what he is told by the ministry. And the ministry, of course, just does what
it is told by the rich men behind the scenes, who do not answer to anybody -
on this earth at least. For these men behind the scenes are the string
pullers, the shape-shifters, the men who never feature in the mainstream
press. And they never feature in the mainstream press because they own the
mainstream press. These men are the law-makers, not the law-abiders. These
men are the men at those meetings to which no press is ever  invited. These
men are the puppeteers.

And with regard to this latest foot and mouth 'pseudo crisis', Tony Blair is
well acquainted with these rich puppeteers. For he himself has strings
attached to every limb. Blair's federalist ideas are not his ideas at all. He
is just the acceptable face at this moment in time who will implement just a
little bit more of the super-state federalist infrastructure. Blair is
totally owned and in the pockets of the rich federalists behind the scenes.

INTERDEPENDENT
And reading between the lines, it would seem that small farm holdings are
incompatible with federalism. For with an independent food supply, the UK can
remain an independent nation. But federalism is all about
interdependence,. And without the food base, the UK becomes an
interdependent nation, the federalist dream, and this is the UK government's
goal. When it comes to the finer details of this policy, we will endeavour to
bring you the fuller picture. One thing is certain. This latest slaughter
campaign has absolutely nothing to do with improving UK agriculture.

But back to Wynn's farm. Talk of the cull being a roundabout means of
creating an interdependent superstate would be an unnecessary intrusion at
this time. Quite simply, Wynn has enough on his plate at the moment. He has
been ruined. Given these circumstances, will Wynn become yet another one of
those farmer suicide statistic? I'll pick myself up, says Wynn. And
yes, he will probably will. He's of hardy stock, like so many other
'ruined-overnight' farmers unnecessarily embroiled in this 'pseudo-crisis'.

But where is this all going? To what unhealthy Utopian destination are we all
headed? When are we all going to start looking at more than just the
superficial issues?  When are we all going to get up out of our armchairs and
cry out 'Enough is enough!'? For if we don't begin to say
'Enough is enough!' we will all be the victims. Remember that a bad
seed can only bear bad fruit.

The quicker we as a nation and other nations begin to get to grips with the
real issues in this debate, the more healthy we will be as a result.

And perhaps some of that horrible smell will begin to disappear too. Please
distribute far and wide.
Comments to steve1@onetel.net.uk

Footnote
In the case of AIDS, the primary agenda is to use Africa as a living example
of just how much we need $multi-multi billion AIDS research programmes to
conquer this dreaded disease It is also about flooding Africa with
highly toxic drugs, and at the same time denying these nations what they
really need (food, water, education etc) in order to effect crude means of
population control in nations deemed of strategic interest to western
political power bases. Currently, all of this is being carried out under the
guise of philanthropic pharmaceutical agencies at last allowing generic
drugs to be manufactured in Africa - Thank you so much Bristol Myers Squibb,
GlaxoSmithKlein  etc. The string-pullers are not stupid. How many of us
are right now innocently hoping that Africa will be allowed to have access to
AIDS drugs?

The link below
http://www.newscientist.com/dailynews/news.jsp?id=ns9999522
is just one of so many which, when read between the lines, scream out our
need to get to grips with the real issues surrounding  official 'global
health policy' A fuller account of what's really taking place in this
supposed African AIDS pandemic can be read in 'World without AIDS' available
at www.credence.org

This article was reproduced from WhatAreWeSwallowing.com which has numerous articles and
comments that I would recommend reading.