Sir, Professor Howard Dalton, on behalf of Defra (letter, Sept 27), has made it clear that a slaughter policy to eliminate foot-and-mouth in the UK is their informed choice. Reductio ad absurdum it will inevitably work.

He fails to acknowledge the loss of UK genetic stock adapted to an area often built up with many generations of both farmers and livestock and the alienation of the industry as a whole.

It is a scientifically unsound policy and all the more remarkable to be supported by, as he states, the largest concentration of virologists in the Western world.

DR COLIN G FINK, Micropathology Ltd, Coventry

Sir, One judges the level of expertise used by Defra by the quality of advice emanating from it, and to date much of the thinking on vaccination seems to be incomplete, out of date and therefore misleading.

The critical question is this: what veterinary experts with field experience of foot-and-mouth disease control by vaccination currently serve on the expert group advising government?

There is top quality advice available within the EU, as well as from US counterparts with expertise in the global FMD threat from bioterrorism, which Defra could draw on. As far as I am aware, these individuals have not been consulted meaningfully, and this is a huge mistake. Meanwhile, because of the implementation of a medieval disease control policy of stamping out only, with no ring vaccination, we live in thrall to this virus, with farmers facing ruin.

There is no scientific justification for this. It is indeed a “manufactured plague”.

ANNE LAMBOURN, Bracknell, Berks

Sir, Ross Clark (Thunderer, Sept 26) suggests that we “value cows’ lives more than our own” because of the high-level emergency response to the foot-and-mouth and bluetongue outbreaks. He contrasts this with the dilatory action over hospital-borne diseases such as MRSA.

People with MRSA are not slaughtered en masse, unlike the “valued” cows. The response to foot-and-mouth has nothing to do with animal welfare and everything to do with seeking to protect the economic interests of the animal farming and meat industries. Farmers can be pacified so long as they receive compensation for their self-inflicted problems, and the public can be assuaged, it seems, so long as the slaughter is done out of sight.

Industrial farming is an oppressive and pitiless business. The inevitable consequence, apart from animal suffering, is disease. Salmonella, campylobacter, swine fever, BSE, bovine TB, avian flu, foot-and-mouth, E. coli and bluetongue are evidence of our disrespect for animal lives.

ANDREW TYLER, Director, Animal Aid

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