theres no slack in the countryside conveyor belt

Tue, Oct 9, 2007

Pack ’em in, feed ’em up, ship ’em out. That’s how it seems to work in the countryside these days. And the proof is here for all to read. The land just cannot sustain what farmers are doing any more. There’s no slack in the system whatsoever. One glitch, at the other end of the country and quarter of a million, did you get that? a quarter of a million animals face starvation. There’s a bottleneck in the system called the UK Government. Their inaction and wrong assumptions about foot and mouth have caused an environmental catastrophe, again.

What does that actually mean? A quarter of a million animals have been brought onto this planet that farmers are unable to look after. Their animal husbandry has completely failed. That’s a pretty serious thing to say. Farmers can’t look after their livestock any more. And they can’t. There are a quarter of a million witnesses to that fact. And the sad state of affairs is that they can just turn round to the government, cap in hand, have them all destroyed and compensated. Nice try farmer, better luck next year. Only not so lucky for the quarter of a million animals they’ve failed to look after.

If a quarter of a million people in the UK were on the point of starvation the country would be up in arms and the government would fall overnight. A quarter of a million animals starving to death as the countryside conveyor belt grinds to a government induced halt and the answer is, just get rid of them. It seems the country is getting used to seeing knee-jerk slaughter on a massive scale and with each mass slaughter, the perceptions people have of animals step down another notch. They slaughtered millions during the first foot and mouth outbreak and nothing bad happened. They slaughter at the merest suspicion of ill health and still nothing bad happens. So what to do with a quarter of a million starving animals? Kill them. Nothing bad ever happens after all.

I tire of this inhuman world sometimes. Nothing good in society can ever come from this insane policy.