FOOT AND MOUTH DISEASE

There is no need to cull animals for this virus. The scientific understanding of it is this: if you were to do nothing it would spread to every animal that could take it. It would be passed to their offspring and would be with us for evermore.

But if that’s the way it could be – that’s the way it would be because it is well known that this disease was around – long before the first cull of 1880.

I’m in a position to tell you that it has been around – ever since we took those animals from the wild – ten thousand years ago. How long before that we can’t know.

When farming in that past here’s what happened: The disease came – it passed and then you most likely – wouldn’t have seen it again in that lifetime.

If the disease is ignored here’s what happens: Some time during the Summer or Autumn, the wild garlic starts to release very potent fumes. When those fumes have built up in the atmosphere for about seven till ten days – there is then a strong enough concentration of them – to wipe out that virus and stop its spread.

It only requires a very weak concentration of the garlic fumes to do that. Here’s how weak it is: If you live within a half-mile of where it grows – you can pick up the smell – when the wind is blowing the fumes towards you. If you live much further out you won’t smell them.

That weak concentration of the garlic fumes is blowing through towns and cities and everywhere wiping out our viruses, that have been lingering from the previous Winter. With the new Winter in come the new viruses but not the FMD virus – it has to be brought in.

The wild garlic grows in an alkaline soil in permanent woodland. It grows all over the world exceptbetween the tropics. That’s why FMD cannot be controlled in tropical countries, if it gets in in any big way. Such areas of the world were never meant for either man or beast to live in. They were meant to remain as they were, mainly permanent Rainforest.

The F+M virus is the equivalent to our measles only we don’t lick our feet. When a child has measles it is traceable to its blood and it will remain traceable, until the child is treated by the wild garlic fumes. It’s exactly the same with the F+M virus.

In this part of the world, the garlic usually starts to release its fumes about the 20th of May. That’s why most outbreaks have ended in late May. In 2001 it was much later in the year when it started to release them. That was due to highly unusual weather conditions.

So long as we have got that garlic, it makes no sense to cull the animals and it would make even less sense to vaccinate against F+M. The only area of Europe where it does make sense to vaccinate is the Netherlands. The land that’s reclaimed from the sea won’t contain the garlic.

May I suggest to our then Chief Veterinary Officer, that you take yourself off to a tropical country where FMD is ongoing. Put a few of those positive testing animals into a smallish shed. Put about six large garlic bulbs in the shed with them. After about two weeks start testing again.

Then you can decide for yourself whether or not you blundered. Also while there, you will find that a little bit of heat has no impact on it.

When we were clearing these islands for farming, we were instructed to build walls round our garlic and preserve it for all time. So, what had been our garliclands are now on the Country Demesnes and Forest Parks.

There will have been very few culls throughout the world, where every animal that had the virus was put down. I would suggest that all housed animals should be protected with garlic fumes. Then if there were a winter outbreak it would be confined mainly to sheep.

While foot and mouth is an airborne virus, it doesn’t remain airborne for any great distance. There is an area at the south of Argentina, which it doesn’t often spread into. That’s because it’s such a long way out of the tropics. Each year just as it is spreading down into that area, the garlic fumes wipe it out.

If the garlic-free areas of the world – were to grow all the onions and domestic garlic needed for the whole world – it may make a great difference. The growing of them would probably be enough – to wipe out the airborne viruses once a year – like the wild garlic does for the rest of the world.

If a co-ordinated investigation is done – it will be discovered that there is a short period every year – when no one in a country (outside tropics) contracts an airborne virus. That will usually be in the early part of the Summer.