I’ll make this as brief as I can. The final report – A Review and Lessons Learned - into 2007’s damaging foot & mouth disease is issued today. It’s yet another whitewash report on Government mismanagement and incompetance.

Further down you’ll find pointers to my earlier posts on this subject, so you can study the background for yourself, that’s assuming you have the time.

I’d never previously done my own research on an issue like this. What I learned was troubling and disheartening. But when Government is looking to avoid blame, I guess, cynically it’s only to be expected. My reason for doing the research was that the source of the outbreak of Foot & Mouth disease [FMD] was at Pirbright, just a few miles away from Lightwater. Enough, you want to know what it’s all about, here goes.

Expert Opinion

Firstly, here are the expert comments of Charles Clover, the Daily Telegraph’s Environment Editor, in which he pulls no punches:

“This is a piece of jelly skilfully designed not to be nailed to a wall.”

“In fact, some disgraceful buck-passing went on which should have merited the mention of the buck passers at the very least. Though you might well wonder why Ministries which had virtually nothing to do with animals were responsible for funding this world-class research facility, the fact is that ministers at DTI were responsible for under-funding it.”

My background analysis

• On August 11th last year I posted on – FMD – uncomfortable issues still to answer.
• Next, on August 13th I posted on – Some digging on redundancies and Government investment at IAH
• Finally, on September 10th I posted on – A Foot and Mouth wash up

Some findings contained in the report:

“creeping degradation of standards” at Pirbright

“shabby and dilapidated” facilities at Pirbright

 ”the facilities of IAH fall well short of internationally recognised standards. And the governance and funding arrangements are muddled and ineffective. There have been many warning signs that all was not well at Pirbright.”

“It is disappointing to record that so little has been achieved over the past six years. This is a lesson not yet applied from the 2001 epidemic.”

 The result:

Government avoid blame, and yet following the disastrous FMD epidemic of 2001 costing £8 billion, so many lessons were not learned. And apparently no-one is to blame for this disaster. The truth is that it’s this Government who are at fault, through cutting vital science budgets, not understanding the management and risks involved. Dreadful, dreadful, dreadful.