The British stood a clinker and a Bill of Billions. Where did they make mistakes?

24. Mar 2025 at 18:15

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In Slovakia Slintečka and Krivačka It last occurred in the 1970s. After five decades, it was now confirmed at three farms near the villages of Medveďov, Ňárad and Baka in the south of Slovakia.

The animals they kept on them must kill and destroy their bodies. The costs of this are estimated at three million euros. However, the damage can be higher if the disease spreads to other farms.

This is also shown by the United Kingdom’s example, which affected the epidemic of the clinkers and the coffin in 2001. The British fought it for more than half a year and cost them billions of pounds. Even then, like now in Slovakia, there have been doubts whether the government has underestimated measures that would effectively prevent the spread of infection.

This was a local problem for the authorities

The first occurrence of the infection was detected on February 19, 2001 on the Benter of Cheale Meats in Essex. Four days later, she appeared on a farm with pigs in the village of Heddon-on-the-Wall, which is 450 kilometers away from the slaughterhouse.

It was found that this farm was the primary trigger of the epidemic that spread throughout the United Kingdom. Its owner Bobby Waugh was even prosecuted for it and convicted in 2002. He was banned from breeding animals and a greasy fine, and he avoided imprisonment only for poor health.

The problem was that he did not alert the authorities to the occurrence of clinkers and cranks on his farm, although most of his eight hundred pigs showed clear symptoms of the disease. It is assumed that the virus has thus spread uncontrollably for at least two weeks.

The authorities also made a mistake. The British Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food declared a national ban on animal transport up to 23 February, four days after the first confirmation of the infection.

On the contrary, IrelandThe Netherlands and France, where the epidemic from Britain began to spread, responded immediately, and so its reach was not so significant.

The British Ministry assumed that infection was a local problem, so it did not respond quickly and by all possible means. Instead, it relied on slow administrative procedures. There was also a lack of cooperation between veterinarians, local authorities and the central government.

The British did not even have enough staff and equipment to quickly test animals and their disposal. The killed animals usually did not burn, but buried on farms. The processes were only accelerated after the army was involved in March 2001.

As a result of mastering or rather non -management of the epidemic, several scientific studies have been created that proposed to improve the procedures of regional offices and the central government in similar situations.

The role of the Ministry of Agriculture was taken over by the new government DEFRA (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs). Her emergency plans, based on the recommendations of the British epidemiologist Iain Anderson, helped significantly reduce the spread of drool and croys in 2007.

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