Experts deliver foot and mouth disease warning

UK politicians told a new outbreak is inevitable

At a briefing by academics from Cardiff University's BRASS Centre (for Business Relationships, Accountability, Sustainability and Society), Professor Bob Lee and Professor David Campbell told Members of the National Assembly for Wales that the process that will cause the next outbreak had already begun.

Their paper Foot and Mouth - the Lessons not yet Learned dismissed the Government's figures for money required to prevent a recurrence as 'quite fanciful' and 'blackboard economics': "a policy adopted because it works on the blackboard but would be an object of ridicule if the costs of actually implementing it were properly evaluated."

It speaks of widespread illegal acts by the UK's former Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, including 'horribly cruel' slaughtering which was a 'lasting national shame'. The report is also strongly critical of the behaviour of some farmers before the disaster, and in their failure to change since.