OCTOBER'S CRISIS COLUMN
It is funny how even writing this column can take on a life of its own. The odd reader or two may recall that last month I wrote about the devastating impact of the then, newly confirmed, outbreak of foot and mouth disease. Unfortunately, in the course of the intervening week the second outbreak was reported just as most restrictions had been lifted.
My two main messages last month in that column were that we must all – retailers and consumers alike – pull together to preserve the good name of British beef and was it not high time that a proper vaccination programme was instigated to ensure death and destruction on that scale would never again cast its shadow our farming herds.
As I was writing it I was suddenly struck by the fact that I could and should actually do something to help and not simply sit on the sidelines. My PR agency represents many of the best food producers and food retailers in the UK and several of my colleagues, like me, are of farming stock. Consequently we understand and feel deeply about farming crises. I had been particularly struck by the TV images of a heartbroken farmer about to assist in the decimation of his much loved herd and in the same segment a local villager lamenting the cost to that farmer of his hard earned reputation for excellence now lost forever.
I have often written in this column about the way it is possible to crisis manage and recover reputations in even the most dire of circumstances, surely then it was possible to offer to achieve this, pro bono, for the farmers in question. Thus a letter from me led to a meeting in the same farm yard that only weeks earlier had posted such terrible images and there I met a father and his son and their wives – whose dignity and integrity shone through.
Not for them self pity or undue focus on the financial compensation no doubt due to them but a commitment to pick up the pieces and get back to the rhythm of life they had always known. I was astonished at their fortitude and the fact the farm shop was reopening within six weeks of the crisis erupting. What we could contribute was the right sort of media attention and by the time this column appears I am confident many people will have seen and heard on TV and radio or read in the newspapers or the farming press the good news that they are back in business.
The other thing that I learned, which just goes to show how wrong the layman can be, is that vaccination is not the answer. Our worldwide reputation for excellence in our British beef is because no strain of foot and mouth, even through vaccine, is ever present in our stock which is why the British beef gene pool is so respected and valued. So in spite of the terrible trauma of the cull of their herd, the Surrey farmers still believe it was the right thing to do.
Sara Pearson
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