Nightmare that need never have happened

It is tempting to say "we told you so" but it usually doesn't help. As Margaret Beckett said in her gracious response to the findings of the Anderson Report, the outbreak of foot and mouth disease last year was "a nightmare". It devastated rural Britain and it left an indelible impact on millions of people who felt contaminated themselves by watching the mass slaughter and the funeral pyres night after night on the television news. But in this case a bit of "we told you so" is needed.

As President of the Soil Association, which leads the organic movement in this country, I played some part at the time in the debate about what we regarded as a hideous strategy that was bound to fail. In "Lessons To Learn", Iain Anderson points out those failings with relentless clarity. But he seems to shy away from the real lesson to learn: that there is an alternative strategy which would have worked and must be used next time.

The really great blunder - the ghastly self-inflicted "nightmare" was to reject the case for vaccination except as "a last resort" - in itself a meaningless concept. As the Soil Association argued at the time, "ring vaccination" to stop the spread of an outbreak from the hotspots would have been swifter and more effective than the socalled "contiguous cull" of millions of healthy animals. Long before the crisis had peaked, I argued that vaccination also offered "the only available prospect of an early reprieve from the mass carnage which has become a nightly horror show with a worldwide audience." No wonder, despite ministerial bleating to the contrary, that the countryside was - in reality - closed for business.

Anderson does genuflect towards the case for vaccination but he seems to shy away from the implications of his analysis. In her Commons statement yesterday, Mrs Beckett accepted his recommendation that "the option" of emergency vaccination should "form part of any future strategy for the control of FMD" but gave no indication what that carefully crafted but singularly imprecise phrase was supposed to mean. I hope it means the Government now acknowledges that the case for vaccination is overwhelming but doesn't quite like to admit it in public. I hope it means that - God forbid - if there is a next time, the Soil Association's advice will not just be heard but heeded as well. And I also hope it means that the "last resort" mantra will be consigned to the funeral pyre.

At the peak of the crisis last year, Margaret Beckett's predecessor, the amiable and clever Nick Brown chuntered on in this vein ad nauseam. But in meetings with us he was far more enthusiastic about the potential of vaccination than he ever acknowledged in public. The only obstacle, he made clear to us, was the National Farmers Union in the person of their president, Ben Gill, who was unalterably opposed to vaccination. In vain we told him that he should not allow himself to be bullied by Mr Gill; that the NFU did not speak for most farmers; and that in this case it really spoke for that small but powerful minority in the union who depended on the export of live animals - an insignificant trade worth at most a few hundred million pounds by comparison with the threat to a wider rural economy worth many billions. He seemed to agree with everything we said - and we agreed to talk again.

At the next meeting, after hundreds of thousands more animals had been consigned to the pyres, the minister declared himself personally persuaded by the case for vaccination. We also knew, from the "summit" at Number 10 that the Prime Minister was similarly inclined. But there was a problem. The NFU had acquired an ally in the colossi of the food processing industry. Led by Nestle, they had opened an entirely new front, claiming that products from vaccinated animals would be rejected by British consumers - which would indeed have been catastrophic. Then came a request: perhaps we could help the Government by persuading the public of the incontestable fact that vaccination posed no risk of any kind to human health.

I suggested that this was surely a task for the Government? But the minister evidently thought that he and his department lacked the credibility needed for such campaign. We were now with Alice In Wonderland. But we did our best, calling a press conference and bringing together the most qualified specialists to make a statement of the blindingly obvious. But by now the media was either bored by the vaccination story or in thrall to the pyres and the body count. Either way, we got nowhere.

I have no doubt that Tony Blair, more than any official or adviser, had a clear strategic grasp of the options and that he strongly favoured vaccination. But in the end, I believe, he made a purely political decision to stick with the cull. Equally I am sure this had nothing to do with the election but everything to do with the tactics of Ben Gill and the food manufacturers. It was a battle that the Prime Minister didn't seek but should have faced.

And that is the only virtue of raking over these embers. Ben Gill and his allies are already busy rewriting the history of last year to suggest that they weren't really opposed to vaccination after all; that, for the future, it is simply a matter of ensuring, as Margaret Beckett said in her Commons statement, that "meat and food products from vaccinated animals" should be able "to enter the food chain normally". In all future cases - at least in relation to FMD - the NFU should be treated for what it is - a busted flush.

The Government not only needs to admit past errors (it had precious little choice anyway), but it must now be open with us. It must unambiguously put a vaccination strategy at the very heart of its contingency planning and explain the reasons for this wise volte-face. If it does, then we will never again be tempted to say "we told you so". Far more important, we will never again face such a nightmare.