Altered lifescapes of disaster: the 2001 Foot & Mouth Disease epidemic

Altered lifescapes of disaster: the 2001 Foot & Mouth Disease epidemic Maggie Mort, Ian Convery, Josephine Baxter, Cathy Bailey

The Watchtree Stone Taken from this ground A Symbol To the birth of Watchtree Nature Reserve. Dedicated on this day the 7th May 2003, the second anniversary of the final burial A Memorial To 448,508 sheep, 12,085 cattle, 5,719 pigs buried here during the Foot and Mouth outbreak of 2001 “The tree of everlasting life takes the goodness from the soil to sustain new beginnings”

lifescape The complexity of spatial, emotional and ethical dimensions of the relationship between landscape, livestock, farming and rural communities.

They [schoolchildren] didn’t like their farms, they didn’t like their homes … they’d say things like, ‘It’s spooky, there’s no noise’Primary schoolteacher, February 2002

http://www.footandmouthstudy.org.uk Listen to extracts

no escape Taking my daughter and her friend home (from a show in Carlisle). It was the same evening that her father’s pedigree sheep were being taken to the voluntary cull. By mistake, I took them through a closed road, the sign having fallen down to the side of the grass. In the dark we went past a burning pyre only yards from the hedge separating the road and the field. We could see the charred, rigid bodies of the cows and the sparks from the fire and the smell permeating the air and the silence of the two young girls…. Community nurse, diary June 2003

clean/dirty You felt like lepers, you were shut off, you felt as though people didn’t want to associate with you, not because of you personally, but because they knew of the consequences... we didn’t go out we didn’t go anywhere DEFRA field officer classed as ‘dirty’, Feb 2002

ambivalence When you were doing it, the culling everything, you were trying to achieve something and it felt right. You were trying to stop it, it kept you going it didn’t matter how many hours you worked you had that feeling, that it was, well it was a necessity. But because you were a slaughterman…nobody would want to know you, I didn’t want to go back (to a culled farm), I didn’t want to go even up the road. slaughterman, Feb 2002

guilt at continuing normal routines I just didn’t want to be responsible for, spreading it around. But, I couldn’t stay off school…after the week was up we were told, we had to open up and go back. It made it very difficult, I felt so bad, driving from here into Longtown to go to work Teacher, worked in Longtown but lived in uninfected area, Feb 2002

death in the wrong place Every farm you went til there was no hard and true way to do things…..like you go to a slaughterhouse everything’s set up... You can’t make it on a farm eh, not when you’re expected to go two minutes, set up, ready, you just can’t do it eh?... I dunno. It just sort of got to me like. You used to go to farms and grown men used to come and cry like. What do you say? I used to know a lot of them, well I still do, what do you say til them like ? You just …sort of ‘I’m sorry’ that’s all you could do. I used to be last walk in and first to walk out. Slaughterman, Feb 2002

..the first farm I went on, erm, and we were involved with people and animals, and this is a farmer whose, all his stock was in the process of being killed, his cattle have already been slaughtered, and I ended up with four other people, including the slaughterman rounding, rounding up black faced sheep, in a field and pen them. Er, and there was a young Spanish vet, there, a young girl, and she was, she was in tears, erm, erm, her remit was to preserve and enhance life, and that kind of brought it all back, and that was just, it was a kind of surreal experience.. Seconded government agency field officer, diary February 2002 role disorder

losing the heft I lost my cows, which were my friends as I’ve said before, I am replacing them. These are not my cows these are somebody else’s cows and I have to learn to love them really. (woman farmer group meetingJan 2002)

hefting A system where succeeding generations of sheep live on the open commons, keeping to their ‘own’ area or heft. This is achieved partly by winter feeding but also by pressure of flocks on neighbouring hefts. Sheep are brought down to better pasture for lambing and then returned to the fell.

Turned dairy cows out into the fields. They were pleased to see grass again – had to get all family members to help – these cows do not know the way to the fields. • (diary, May 2002) • Those farmers who survived FMD do not realise what it is like as restocked cows do not know their way to the fields, and just follow the leader. • (diary July 2003 )

animal/human Saw a patient who was injured by a cow calving. It was new stock, having lost everything to FMD. It changed her. After 2 weeks in hospital with surgery, it will take her 6 months to physically fully recover. I don’t think she’ll ever have the same confidence - at present she doesn’t want to calf again…. Community nurse, diary March 2003

Altered lifescapes of disaster: the 2001 Foot & Mouth Disease epidemic