Foot and mouth disease alert: farmers fear the worst following reports of German produce biosecurity calamity

Farmers and their tractors protest in Whitehall, London over the changes to inheritance tax (IHT) rules in the budget which introduced new taxes on farms worth more than £1 million. Picture date: Monday February 10, 2025.

Leaders

Published 13th Feb 2025, 08:22 BST

Down the centuries there are various claims as to the provenance of the expression, but it would take a brave punter to bet against a brow-beaten farmer having first assembled the words, almost certainly as a lament to rain continuously stopping play out in the field. Once an idiom with figurative, amorphous meaning, it should be viewed in this instance as more of a proverb: because farmers in this country simply cannot catch a break.

First came the inheritance tax bombshell that has rocked rural Britain. A deliberate and calculated policy shift that Chancellor Rachel Reeves has repeatedly said represents just one of myriad emergency measures she had to implement in order to steady the economy, her hand forced by that now infamous £22bn black hole.

But, now, livestock farmers in particular are braced for the worst possible scenario; a potential outbreak of foot and mouth disease as fears mount over the possibility that German produce – flagged as a risk seven days before Britain stopped it entering these shores – may have come through border controls whilst carrying the highly contagious virus.

So concerned is the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs committee about the matter that it has written to the Minister responsible for biosecurity to urgently clarify the details of precisely what volumes and varieties of produce managed to get through, so that contingencies, should they be deemed necessary, can be put in place at the earliest opportunity.

As an advocate for and a friend of the rural and farming community, this newspaper adds its calls for clarity on whether or not mistakes have been made that could and should have been avoided.