Introduction

Whilst New Labour might have anticipated one particular difficult rural issue as providing a challenge in their first administration, namely hunting, they can hardly have anticipated a second. Yet in February 2001, the government was confronted with one of its most serious domestic crises so far. The epidemic of foot and mouth disease (FMD) was the first in Britain since 1968, apart from an isolated outbreak, affecting just one farm, on the Isle of Wight in 1981. It brought far-reaching consequences not only for biosecurity practices and policies, but also for our understanding of agri-food sustainability and of the changing nature of the rural economy, and in the institutional arrangements for rural policy. Paradoxically, the FMD crisis brought agriculture to the centre of political and media attention for many months at the same time as driving home the message that farming had long since ceased to be the dominant economic and social force within rural communities. The story is of an old disease in a radically new countryside, new in terms of its socioeconomic profile and its farming practices.

FMD had been prevalent in Britain well into the 20th century with major epidemics in 1922, 1924, 1954 and 1968, and only two totally FMD-free years between 1922 and 1967 (Anderson, 2002). But most of these earlier outbreaks were locally contained, as farms were smaller and more likely to trade locally even in the late 1960s. The disease itself is debilitating rather than necessarily fatal but, being highly infectious, has potentially disastrous economic and animal welfare implications if allowed to become established. The policy of slaughtering was pushed in the late 19th century by pedigree breeders with their obvious particular interests in protecting high value stock (Woods, 2002) but few would deny that it was a policy that eventually achieved a long period of FMD-free status for Britain with corresponding economic and welfare benefits. However, the slaughter policy was based on local containment and a more localised agricultural industry than had become the norm. The meat supply chain by 2001 had become predominantly national rather than local. A combination of improvements in road transport, the concentration of slaughtering facilities, and Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) livestock payment rules had led to movements of animals over greater distances in the period between 1968 and 2001 (Law, 2006; Winter et al, 2002).