On the 25th anniversary of the foot and mouth epidemic, Herald writer Rosemary Goring asks why it’s important we remember that cataclysmic event.

The silent spring of 2001 is a time few of us who live in the country would ever want to revisit. My memory of it is made up of an album of snapshots. Squelching across disinfectant mats when visiting a farm. Smoke billowing over the skyline. The stench of cremated animals and kerosine. The silhouettes of cattle carcasses, hooves pointing accusingly to the heavens from their pyres. News footage of farmers barricading themselves in to prevent compulsory slaughter of their livestock. Empty green fields at Easter, where lambs should have been frolicking and cattle ruminating, and the sense that even the birds were quietened by the strangeness of it all.

That unforgettable year, it felt as if an annihilating form of war had broken out, turning the most beautiful and productive areas of countryside into sites of hidden devastation. Devastating, indeed, is one of the words most frequently used by those recalling the epidemic of foot and mouth disease that began 25 years ago this month.

On 19 February, 2001, a routine veterinary inspection at an Essex abattoir discovered the disease in pigs. Later its source was traced to a farm in Northumberland. The likeliest cause of the infection was infected illegally imported meat, which had been used in undercooked pig swill.

Lucy Letby fallout and baby deaths expose crisis in maternity units

Contract secured for 'world’s largest offshore wind farm' in North Sea

Trump is a laughing stock – and it’s all down to one man

I grew up eating guga. It's part of Hebridean culture. We don't need Central Belt ban

When reliving those grim months, during which the government raced to get the situation under control, the parallels with the Covid pandemic are striking. There was a sense of the authorities being, at best, one step behind the infection. Farmers often did not agree with government protocols to halt transmission yet, apart from a few rebels, they had to abide by the law. Unable to leave their farms, they were effectively under lockdown. Added to which, the rising tally of animal deaths as the months ticked by was horribly similar to the daily announcements of Covid mortalities.   

The figures of the foot and mouth cull are almost too big to comprehend. By the time the epidemic ended, 6.5 million cattle, sheep and pigs had been slaughtered, at a cost of around £8 billion to the UK economy. That sum is bad enough, but it’s impossible to calculate the emotional toll it took on farmers and their families. Even today, some can barely talk about it. In that way too it is like the Covid pandemic which, for those who lost loved ones, remains unspeakably painful.

Interestingly, despite being a community famed for its reluctance to express emotion, those farmers who have been willing to talk on this milestone anniversary have not held back. There is no underplaying the traumatic impact it had at the time, or its far-reaching repercussions, both financial and psychological.

Ten thousand farms across the UK had their animals killed, many of them because a neighbouring farm had been infected, even though their own livestock showed no symptoms. The worst hit regions were Cumbria and the south of Scotland, especially Dumfries & Galloway. I recall spending a night in a hotel near Wigtown, where slaughtermen were billeted. Eavesdropping on them in the bar, it was hard not to wonder what it took to do a job like this, destroying hundreds of animals, heaping them onto pyres and setting them alight. What toll was it taking on them, as well as everyone on the farms?

You might be asking, why this miserable trip down memory lane?  What has it got to do with us today? Well, in the same way that we know, in our heart of hearts, that at some point there will be another global pandemic, the same is true of foot and mouth. Some farmers, in fact, are adamant that it is not a case of if but when.

Last year, there were outbreaks of foot and mouth in Germany, Hungary and Slovakia. (The one in Germany cost the economy a    billion euros.) That is scary enough. But when you consider that hundreds of tonnes of illegal meat are seized at the UK’s borders every year, the odds of escaping a future epidemic seem vanishingly  slim. And it’s not just meat but any food of animal origin, including dairy, that potentially can be contaminated and spread disease.

To add to concern, last month Dover Port Health Authority recorded its highest-ever monthly seizure of illegal meat: 34 tonnes. Since November last year, Suffolk Port Health Authority has confiscated a tonne of illegally imported pork.

Whether the reason for these worrying figures is better detection, or that far more products are being smuggled into the country, is not yet clear. What is indisputable, however, is that the danger posed by foot and mouth remains high, as it does of other contagious infections such as African swine flu.

Nevertheless, despite the evidence of perpetual threat and narrow misses, the government is bullish about the enhanced biosecurity controls it has in place. Among its precautions is a planned National Biosecurity Centre. To me, that sounds simultaneously reassuring and alarming.

The UK’s Chief Vet, Christine Middlemiss, insists that modern methods of tracing the movement of animals mean that, should an infection be found, a national shutdown can be put into place far more swiftly than previously until the cases are isolated. Added to which, significant changes in agricultural practice, such as a ban on swill and restrictions on livestock movement for six days after purchase, reduce the risks of transmission.

I’m no expert, of course, but it sounds to me as if the measures in place to prevent an outbreak of the scale and ferocity of 2001, while robust, are by no means failsafe. And although fundamental lessons seem to have been learned from that calamity, it’s understandable that farmers remain profoundly uneasy.

Given their concerns, it’s doubly important to remember the misery that engulfed us a quarter of a century ago. Reflecting on what farmers and their communities had to endure underlines just how crucial it is to police our borders rigorously and ensure the highest standards of biosecurity on every farm, be it an industrial-sized enterprise or a smallholding.

As winter draws to an end, it is also a reminder, were it needed, not to take our farms for granted. Fields will soon be filling with lambs, cattle and pigs, making it look  - and sound - like business as usual. But as 2001 brutally showed, this uplifting harbinger of spring requires a huge amount of effort, care and foresight.

Rosemary Goring is a columnist, historical novelist, and author of books on Scottish history. Her latest is Exile: The Captive Years of Mary, Queen of Scots.

© Herald Scotland