The government's chief scientist has focused on wildlife as the cause
of last week's bird-flu outbreak - but it looks like he's wrong.
All
through the main bird migratory season last autumn, and during this winter, the
government has been testing wild birds for avian flu. They found evidence of the
low pathogenic variety of bird flu, which seems to have been present in wild
bird populations for a long time, without causing any serious problems. But they
didn't find a single case of the high pathogenic variety, H5N1, the type that
turned up on Bernard Matthews' turkey farm just over a week ago. As someone else
said, it always seemed a bit unlikely that the first wild bird for nearly a year
to carry the deadly version of the virus should just happen to drop dead over
Suffolk and fall into a ventilation shaft on one of Bernard's turkey factories.
Despite this, for most of last week the government's chief scientist,
Sir David King, led the charge to ! blame wild birds. At least he was being
consistent. From the start of the bird flu scare, he has seized on wild birds as
the source of the infection. Last year he was also alone in the government in
declaring that this could mean the end of free-range and organic chicken and
turkey farming. To her credit, the chief vet at the Department for Environment,
Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), Debbie Reynolds, has adopted a more open-minded
approach. Defra has worked well with representatives of free-range and organic
poultry producers, agreeing protocols that would allow this type of farming to
continue.
Sir David is admired by many environmentalists, me included,
for his forthright leadership on climate change. It was him who, rightly,
reminded Tony Blair that climate change is a greater threat than terrorism. But
like his predecessor as chief scientist, Sir Bob May, he is a huge fan of
genetic engineering. Maybe this is part of the job description for chief
scientist in T! ony Blair's government.
For over a year, there have be!
en persi stent suggestions that the bird flu epidemic was connected to the
spread of industrial poultry production, particularly in south-east Asia. This
is in contrast to the media's focus on migrating birds and small-scale, peasant
farming, with small flocks of chickens kept in traditional ways. A report by
Grain, Fowl Play, published early last year, set out the case in detail, but has
been largely ignored. The outbreak at Bernard Matthews' factory, and the
apparent link to Hungary, precisely fits the thesis put forward by Grain.
Up to the middle of last week, Sir David King was still blaming wild
birds. Even when evidence for the Hungarian connection emerged, he barely
blinked before announcing that even so, the virus could now have got into the
UK's wild bird population, which therefore still posed a terrible threat.
Of course wild birds can spread the disease, but why this exclusive
focus on wildlife? And why the rush to suggest that outdoor and organic
producti! on might have to end? I think the answer lies in the two very
different and contradictory visions of the future of farming and food that are
currently battling for supremacy. One view is held by Sir David, most of those
running the UK's National Farmers' Union, in parts of Defra and in the
Department for Overseas Development, and by Tony Blair himself. They see a
hi-tech farming future, continuing the trend of the last 60 years, overwhelming
natural processes with chemicals and new technology. For crops, this means
genetically engineered seeds which produce crops that kill insects, are
resistant to weed-killers, and deliver new benefits through higher yields or
other enhanced characteristics. For animals, cloning and other advanced breeding
techniques will produce creatures that produce ever more milk or meat, ever more
quickly, and cheaply. "Bio-security" around these caged and weakened animals
will prevent them succumbing to diseases and infections.
The alternativ!
e, organic vision sees us working with more natural processes,! providi ng
nutrients from crops by fixing nitrogen using the sun's energy and plants like
clover. Growing a wide variety of crops, on mixed crop and livestock farms,
provides fertility, weed control and natural resistance to disease. Farm animals
mature more slowly and produce less milk. They live as natural a life as
possible, eating natural diets, living outside or having access to fresh air and
grass for most of their lives. This gives them positive health, allowing them to
resist most disease threats. Needless to say, the advocates of this system, like
myself, also think it provides tastier and healthier food, on top of the
accepted, very significant environmental benefits.
While many say there
must be room for both systems, the reality is that they take both farming and
food in totally different directions. The hi-tech brigade assume world-wide
trade in farm products and food is the norm. Organic farmers want as closed a
system as possible, with most food produced local! ly. Hi-tech assumes we have
the right to all-year-round availability of any food we want, usually processed.
Organic assumes a move to a much more seasonal diet, generally fresh and
unprocessed. Hi-tech assumes continued growth in cheap meat consumption, organic
assumes we eat less, more expensive but higher quality meat.
Unfortunately, for the hi-tech brigade, things don't seem to be working
out as they should. Genetically-engineered crops have yet to deliver any
increase in yield. GM crops that are engineered to kill insects, like GM cotton,
seem to suffer from unexpected side-effects - the cotton buds fall off the plant
when they get too hot. GM plants resistant to weed-killers, and sprayed with
chemicals that kill all other plants, have led to the rapid spread of resistant
weeds. Overall, the use of weed-killers then increases, following an initial
drop. The plants that kill insects have spawned resistant pests far faster than
anyone predicted. And in India, she! ep and goats died after eating GM crops.
For animals, ! the huge increase in output, for example in dairy cows,
is leaving more and more of them incapable of managing more than one lactation.
One-third of Britain's dairy cows are now killed after one period of milking,
their bodies wrecked by the thousands of litres of milk that pour through them.
With mad cow disease, foot-and-mouth and now bird flu, it is pretty clear that
disease is a growing problem for industrial livestock farming, despite the
claims that "bio-security" will lock nature and disease out. The rise in TB in
cattle, widely blamed on badgers, seems better correlated with another aspect of
industrial farming, namely the widespread movement of animals and their products
around the country, and indeed around the world. This was revealed by the rapid
spread of foot-and-mouth, and may now be responsible for the bird flu outbreak
in Suffolk.
In this crisis, Defra ministers David Miliband and Ben
Bradshaw seem more determined to keep open movement of meat than to protec! t us
from imported diseases. Exactly the same political priority - keeping open the
global meat trade - led Tony Blair (with the backing of big food businesses and
the National Farmers' Union) to refuse to vaccinate during the foot and mouth
epidemic - condemning tens of thousands of healthy animals to unnecessary
deaths.
It must be hard for Sir David, as an advocate for "modern"
hi-tech farming, based on global movement of meat and other food, driven forward
by the miracles of genetic engineering and safeguarded by hi-tech bio-security,
to have to admit that the very characteristics that define the system he admires
are causing such terrible problems. Far easier to blame it on the (wild) birds.
Maybe one positive thing to come from this mess is that it has once again
reminded people that they are being conned about where their food really comes
from. Turkeys, or any other meat, from anywhere in the world, can be imported
into the UK, tinkered around with a bit,! and packed and labelled as "British".
Agri-business knows tha! t if the y told the truth about the food they flog us,
still less let us see the inside of one of those turkey factories, the chances
are no one would ever buy the stuff again. Demand for organic food looks like
receiving yet another boost.