wfn.org | Stock plague has Scots worshippers in quarantine

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Note #6544 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

5-June-2001
01188

Stock plague has Scots worshippers in quarantine

Foot-and-mouth disease threatens ancient small-farm culture

by Alexa Smith

LOUISVILLE - The Rev. Alan Ross hasn't seen some of his parishioners for
months. Neither has the Rev. Norman Hutcheson.

It isn't that members of the Church of Scotland's parishes along the English
border have suddenly taken to playing hooky. Months after a
government-ordered slaughter of sheep on 300 contiguous properties, they are
still self-quarantined on their farms, hoping to eliminate an animal disease
so mysterious that even the experts aren't sure how it spreads.

Although a few are disinfecting the wheels of their vehicles and searching
out work on other people's land, many have not gone beyond the farm gate
since February, when the outbreak began.  Now they're disinfecting empty
barns and stalls, scraping up the muck in the fields, where herds that
cannot be moved have chewed up the grass and turned once green pastures into
mud-and-sewage pits.

The farmers' long isolation is a worry for pastors who haven't been able to
visit their parishioners.

Seventy-year-old Beth Patterson, a member of Ross' tiny Tundergarth Kirk,
sums up the farmers' heartbreak well: "There's nothing left, just ruts in
the fields."

The ruts are the only traces of the lorries that criss-crossed Paddockhole
Farm in March, during the slaughtering of sheep and lambs that had grazed in
its fields - including 300 lambs killed just weeks after their birth.

"What a deafening silence in the morning," Patterson says. No sheep. No
lambs. There's not a sheep in the whole parish left between Lockerbie and
here.

"Some don't even have cattle left," she said, pointing out that her son,
David, kept Paddockhole's cows away from the sheep. So far, she says, the
veterinarian has found no sign of infection in the herd. The Pattersons'
sheep had to be slaughtered because sheep in neighboring fields were
infected.

While it is a relief that the cows survived the spring, it is no guarantee
of anything. According to Patterson, after weeks without a single reported
infection, the disease popped up again less than two weeks ago, just 14
miles from the Pattersons' farm.

"People are just not sure it is over; there's no sign of that yet," says
Hutcheson, who has been ministering in rural Urr for years and who says that
a fortnight needs to pass without another case before anyone can breath
easier or even think about putting more animals in the fields. "There's been
an outbreak 40 miles from here. Consequently, nobody's making plans yet.

"It will be August, at the earliest."

That's not good news. It means, among other things, folks will be idle on
their farms longer - and will have to keep postponing plans for restocking
livestock.

The fear of cross-infection has been so great that Ross's four small
churches in Dumfries and Galloway shut down completely. Out of 50 leased
farms in one parish, 48 were shut down by disease.

Foot-and-mouth disease is not considered a human disease, because humans
rarely contract it. When they do, the symptoms are mild. However, humans can
transmit the virus to susceptible animals if they have come into contact
with infected livestock, soil or objects such as clothing and footwear. The
federal Center for Disease Control in Atlanta say the virus causes losses in
milk and meat production.

"People just feel that they can't, that they dare not go to any farms to
visit, and they've felt that way since February," says Ross, who has kept in
touch with parishioners by letter, sharing prayers and tidbits of news about
neighbors and friends. The same is true at Hutcheson's parish: "They've just
stayed in, rather than risk spreading it."

While Ross' Tundergarth parish opened its doors again on Easter morning,
there are plenty of people who haven't yet crossed its threshold - and those
who do first scrub their Wellingtons at their own farm gates and again at a
bucket of bleach by the church door.

One of Ross' elders was in church last week for the first time since
February.

Fear of spreading the disease has shut down not only churches, but grange
halls and other gathering places and even affected funerals, which tend to
be less well-attended these days.
Groceries are delivered to the farm gate. 
Neighbors communicate by yelling at a distance.
The financial catastrophe brought on by foot-and-mouth disease hasn't been
restricted to farmers.

Many family-owned businesses are also shut down. Although the disease is so
far confined to the area along the English border, hotel operators there are
bracing for a disaster, knowing that tourists will stay off the fields and
footpaths.
Plenty of small farmers used to run bed-and-breakfasts to pick up extra
cash, but that's unlikely this year.

What may be worse, however, is that some animal bloodlines, developed over
generations, have been eradicated. Sheep that knew the safest routes to
pasture are now dead, and it will take years for new lambs to develop those
instincts.

The Church of Scotland has appointed the Rev. Richard Frazer of Aberdeen as
a liaison to small farmers, a community that was already reeling by the new
global markets and the competition of massive agribusinesses.

The denomination is trying to tackle the collapse in income in several ways:

* Urging people to buy local produce at local shops, and urging local
markets to stock Scottish produce.

* Urging the Scottish Executive Rural Affairs Department to see that no
rural businesses or farms go out of business as a consequence of
foot-and-mouth disease, and to declare its ongoing commitment to support
small businesses and family tenant farms in Scotland.

* Renting out ministers' fields, which are often large holdings next to
older manses in rural Scotland, for grazing or farming.

Earlier this month, the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland decided
to set up a committee to explore the implications of foot-and-mouth disease
for the rural community and for agriculture. It will report to next year's
Assembly.

Repercussions could be massive, Frazer says, if many farmers go out of
business, a development that could forever alter the pastoral landscape of
rural Scotland, now a country of tiny sheep farms.
While the cause of the infection isn't known, he said, some are speculating
that contaminated meat was imported from Southeast Asia. Others think it was
caused by feed containing animal byproducts.

"This is a huge pastoral concern," said Frazer, adding that farmers fear
that the crisis is being downplayed by politicians avid to win England's
upcoming elections. "Farmers tell me that when they wake up, the first thing
they think is:  'Get up and get busy.' Now, the second thing they think is: 
'For what?'

"They're not going to be able to restock for a long time, at least autumn.
Maybe next year."

Patterson tells an even more poignant story of shepherds who have grown up
nursing baby lambs, getting them to suckle, but this year lost every single
one.  When government officers arrived at Paddockhole Farm, she said, she
had just tucked a baby lamb next to its mother, and promised to come back
before bedtime to see that she'd get another good drink.

Fifteen minutes later, the Pattersons were told that their flocks would be
destroyed the next morning.

"Scots keep emotions to themselves, you know. Big boys don't cry," said
Hutcheson, describing an unsentimental culture. "One farmer told me:  'As
long as the problem doesn't come into the house, we'll survive. It doesn't
matter what happens in the field. It doesn't matter what happens with the
stock.

"As long as the family is all right, we'll survive.'"

The farms around Tundergarth Church, which is searching for a pastor, is
where Pan Am flight 103 exploded in December, 1988, just outside of
Lockerbie.

"One hundred twenty people from the flight rained down on the farms," Frazer
said. "It is unbelievable. These people really know what it means to
grieve."

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