You probably neither knew or cared, but last night another Foot and Mouth Disease outbreak was announced in England.  Even now, all farms are being sealed off, all movement of livestock is a criminal offence until restrictions are lifted.

All the animals on that little farm near Guildford are being slaughtered and burned.

All farm animals within a 3 kilometer radius will be slaughtered and burned over the next week. 

This might effect some our attitudes to what we do, but I'm going to talk about farming and about meat and about love and about the implicit contract involved in the whole process.

My father had 112 acres of wonderful light sandy soil in Wiltshire.  He was a "small farmer", always an amusing description for such a huge man.  At its height in 1999/2000, he kept 130 head of organic beef cattle.   

The last outbreak of FMD was in 2001.  That time, it took two weeks before anyone imposed movement restrictions because the Ministry of Agriculture (since rebranded in an unsuccessful effort to dodge the sheer loathing they inspired at that time) was panicking and trying to take orders from their uncaring masters in Brussels.

By the time the movement ban was imposed, the disease was reasonably widespread, although not yet at epidemic levels.

The Ministry appointed a statistician, Professor Roy Meadows, to the containment action.  This was the man who in 1988 had predicted 25 million deaths from CJD by 2000 so perhaps they knew what they getting.

Meadows instigated a 3km burning policy around every suspected outbreak in the country.  Over 8 millon cattle and untold numbers of sheep and pigs were shot by men in NBC suits out there in the fields then piled in heaps and burned.  Confirmed cases of FMD were later assessed at 340 among seventeen herds.

We never got an outbreak at home.  We got the cattle in as soon as the first outbreak hit the news, we quarantined them. However, nearly two miles away, a man lived who had moved from London the year before and had bought some pedigree sheep as a hobby.  He refused to pen them in, and one of them developed a limp so he immediately called in the Ministry. Any farmer could have told him the animal had snagged its hoof on some rocks, but he knew nothing.  So he called them.

Everything within 3km was slaughtered.  We were just inside the radius.

Before that time, we suffered quite badly under the BSE restrictions.  Even though we had a fully organic herd, this made no difference.  "British beef" was suddenly evil and we barely scratched a living, despite the fact that we could absolutely guarantee no BSE in our herd.  But my dad kept the faith.

He loved his animals.  He named every one.  Not fancy pedigree names, mostly silly pet names, something reflective of each animal's personality because he knew them all so well.  He cared about each one.

This may confuse people who don't work on the land, because they were beef cattle and they all went for slaughter in the end, but that's the great mystery and the root of all religions.  When you raise meat, you do it with love.  When you kill your beloved cattle, you do it with love and you know that the bargain is there - this meat will be eaten, tasted, it will bring joy.  People will respect that something loved and valued died to feed them, to give them life. 

Butchers will show care and pride in their work as they prepare the meat. Chefs and cooks and people at home will show care in their cooking, everyone who eats will understand this bargain and without ever needing to take a moment to think about it, they will understand this sacrifice which is made for them.

This is why the disconnect between country and town is so very wrong.  People in towns buy prepacked meat from supermarkets who care only about their profit margins.  Food is sanitized and artificially beautified, made to look like any other commodity.  This push away from our ancient understanding leads to massive factory farms and battery hens and pigs then never see natural light and the uncaring, unconscious cruelty of a society which has lost all memory of where it came from and what it is.

Do the kids who thoughtlessly scarf a Big Mac ever consider the literal life and death nature of their actions?  Don't bother to answer, please.

After the slaughter, something broke inside my father.  He no longer named new cattle, he no longer seemed capable of bringing himself to love them.  Two years after the cull finished, on the very night of the day the compensation cheque finally arrived, he died from a massive heart attack despite having never showed any signs of a weak heart or having any family history of it.  He was sixty-five years old, still the strongest man I ever knew.

His heart was broken, it just took that long for him to finally admit it.

My father loved his animals and he could not bear their senseless, wasteful, uncaring deaths.  He could not bear that they died without love.  I still cannot bear the wasteful death of my father from a broken heart; it probably shows.

But I can still keep to the contract.  When I eat, I think about what I'm eating and the years of work and care and love that made it possible.  I think about blood sacrifice and life and death. And if ever I think about waste, it's not litter or municipal landfills I see in my head, it's huge pyres with black smoke pouring from them and the sensless destruction of a life's work.