Foot & Mouth

[M Holmes]

Jill Strobridge writes:

> > P.S.  I'm going to Ireland late this summer.  Any reason I should be
> > concerned about foot and mouth in the South ruining the trip?

> Some sheep were imported to a Northern Ireland farm from one of the
> affected English markets.  These turned out to have the virus so all
> that could be found were destroyed.  However several remained untraced
> (at the time, though they might have been located by now).

This gets more surreal by the minute. It turns out that in Ireland (and
everyone suspects damn near everywhere else in the EU) there's a habit
of driving sheep around in the middle of the night called "Bed and
Breakfasting" wherein the sheep spend a day as guests at another farm.

The reason for this is that EU subsidies are based on numbers of sheep
and so farmers are prone to inflate these numbers to reap subsidies. The
EU, being wise to this if practically nothing else, send inspectors to
count sheep and produce a healthy market in sheep tourism.

Needless to say this doesn't help contain sheep-borne disease.

The missing 60+ sheep from Jill's above statement are suspected to have
been of a kind of sheep tour of Ireland with the EU inspector following
them around like a demented Hawkwind fan.

Mike "Say that sheep sure looks familiar" Holmes