Again

[poliphilo]

FOOT AND MOUTH MONTH

March 2001

                            

This will go down as a vile month

With sappers burying long dead sheep

And Cumbria as dark with pyres

As Mordor. But that’s agribusiness.

Feed your beasts on funny stuff,

And kill the bugs and the meadow flowers.

And what do you expect? You wanna see

Nature at her bitching best?

You’ll have to come to town for that

And walk abandoned railway lines,

Or mooch about the derelict pits

And mills where no-one’s ever sprayed.

I step outside to fetch  the bin

And the grass behind the garages

Just ticks with life that won’t make money.


So Foot and Mouth  is back- this time on a farm in Surrey, or, at least, that's where it's been first detected- but the likelihood is they'll find it here, there and everywhere,  because it's so contagious.  The footage that was used to back the story on TV last night was presumably from the last outbreak- the dead cows being stacked like kindling, the smoking pyres. 

I see (from this poem I've dug up) I was quite angry in 2001. in 2007 I'm more inclined to shrug. Yeah, this is the kind of mess human beings get themselves into. So it goes. The difference is not just that I'm older, it's that Iraq has happened in the meantime. What are a few dead cows and sheep beside the humanitarian disaster we've caused over there? Maybe anger is the more appropriate response but I'm all angered out.  Anger just doesn't seem to get us anywhere, does it?

Comments

[le-oef.livejournal.com]

yeah i really like this poem and the trekkie poem.
just read that there was a live virus "drill" in the area....WOOPS!

heres the short article in case you're still interested. yes outrage fatigue. its all entertainment to me now. world is just a stage...of good dramatic times.


"Virus leak causes FMD in southern England - newspaper"

The source of foot-and-mouth disease found in southern Britain is a U.S. pharmaceutical company, the Mail on Sunday weekly reported.

British specialists said the strain of food-and-mouth disease found in cattle on a farm in the county of Surry, was similar to the one used at a nearby laboratory.

The government-funded Institute for Animal Health's Pirbright Laboratory, which is studying the disease, is located some six kilometers from the affected farm.

A number of sources reported that it hosted an international drill last month during which live viruses of foot-and-mouth disease were used.


http://www.itar-tass.com/eng/level2.html?NewsID=11769907&PageNum=0

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Thanks.

I hadn't read about the "drill". They were saying on TV today that the floods may have contributed- that the virus got into the sewers and then the flood water caused sewage to spill into the fields.