A Disease of Economic Importance - Reflections on the Foot and Mouth Crisis of 2001

One afternoon in early 2001, Kate and I were sitting watching a news report about a disease outbreak on a farm in Essex.

            'Foot and mouth disease,' Kate said. 'That rings a bell. Which one is that?'

            I shrugged. 'Um... is it... it's the one with... er. It's notifiable, isn't it?'

            Kate looked pointedly back at the telly. 'Obviously.'

            I shrugged again. 'Well, I'm sure it'll be okay.'

            Hitherto, my sole encounter with the disease that would cause such destruction in Devon was while I was failing my public health examination in the fourth year. On the next page from the fabled 'Write short notes on the process of cheese making,' there had been an essay question on foot and mouth disease. In the exam I had wracked my brain to try and remember my crib notes, and splurged it all out onto the blank sheet in front of me: A viral disease - a picornavirus, to be precise. Very stable in the environment and highly contagious - the virus can potentially travel miles as an airborne particle - possibly even across the English Channel[1]. Predominantly affects ungulates. Causes fever, followed by ulcers in the mouth and around the feet. Rarely fatal in adults, but can cause heart problems in neonates. Otherwise self-limiting[2] in a few weeks. Not present in the UK at this time.

            I surrounded these bare bones with a fair amount of waffle, but that covered most of the things I knew about the disease... which is another reason I failed the public health exam. I had written my notes as if I was looking at an individual animal. I wrote (and knew) almost nothing about the economic implications of the disease.

            That was going to change in the Spring of 2001.

*

           

            Events moved quickly from that first diagnosis. A few days after the disease was confirmed in Essex, movement restrictions were placed in a five-mile radius around the site - no one could move animals in or out of the zone. By then, of course, it was already too late. A few days after that, a case was confirmed in Northumberland. The EU imposed a ban on the UK exporting any meat or meat products, and shortly after that, foot and mouth arrived in Devon. Within a week, cases had been confirmed in Scotland, Cornwall and Cumbria. It was becoming clear that the country was in the grip of a full-blown epidemic.

            The Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Fisheries (MAFF) appeared to be moving swiftly to combat the disease. They quickly instigated movement restrictions all over the country - not just for cattle, sheep and pigs, but for horses and dogs and humans too. Very soon into the crisis, they adopted a policy known as the 'contiguous cull' - every time a new case of foot and mouth was discovered, every cow, pig and sheep within a three mile radius was to be slaughtered.

            Kate and I watched the news unravel with some confusion. Foot and Mouth (and, from here on I'm going to use the accepted abbreviation FMD) was, in my mind, stored in a category along with kennel cough - highly contagious, but low severity. FMD wasn't a zoonosis - humans can't catch it.[3] It wasn't a pleasant disease to suffer from - what disease is?  - but it certainly wasn't in the same league as the horrors of rabies, or anthrax, or any number of other diseases that I could think of without even reaching for my large animal medicine notes. It was incredibly contagious, of course - but there was a vaccine available, wasn't there? I was sure there was. Quite an effective one, as I remembered. Why was the government behaving as if the dead had risen from the earth to feast upon the living?

            Nevertheless, with outbreaks popping up all over the place, and with us being repeatedly told what a dreadful disease the government was dealing with, we assumed there were good reasons behind all the measures. I had failed that exam, after all - I was hardly an authority on the subject.

            Within weeks it became clear that two counties had been particularly badly hit by the disease - Cumbria, and Devon. MAFF was rapidly running out of staff to help with the crisis, and the call went out for veterinary surgeons to assist in combating the disease. Locuming at the time, there was no reason for me not to help out - no reason, except that I was not an experienced cattle vet, and I was concerned that I wasn't really the sort of person that the ministry was looking for. I really wasn't sure that I wanted to be involved in this 'contiguous cull', however necessary it was. I was, after all, a vegetarian[4], and so to some extent had opted out of the system already - although I still drunk milk, and ate cheese, and I knew I was fooling myself if I thought that didn't make me complicit in a lot of the problems of modern farming. Nevertheless, it didn't seem like something I could help with.

            A few weeks into March, I changed my mind. I would dearly love to recount here that it was out of a sense of patriotism, or 'Blitz spirit'- wanting to do my part for the country. I would, more dearly, like to announce that the reason I became a Temporary Veterinary Inspector (TVI) for the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food was because, if more slaughter was necessary, then I would do what I could to ensure the welfare of those to be killed was as good as it could be. There's some truth to both of these, but here's the main, rather depressing one: MAFF were so desperate that they announced they were doubling the pay of TVIs from £125 per day to £250. A fortune for me - a week's pay for working a couple of days.

            I applied, was accepted, fast-tracked, and within a few days found myself standing outside the MAFF building near Exeter, hoping that someone in charge would explain to me, in very simple terms, exactly what the hell I was supposed to do.

            While I was sitting in a large conference room, amongst many other vets - some large animal veterans, some dyed-in the wool small animal-types, some new graduates, and many, many Spanish vets, taking advantage of the sudden opportunity for work and pay far better than anything they might find in their home country - experiencing a very short induction lecture, arguments were raging across the county and the political landscape. The countryside had been, by this point, effectively shut down. People weren't supposed to travel into it unless absolutely necessary. Tourists stopped coming to the UK. Opposition party leaders were asking why MAFF hadn't imposed restrictions as soon as they had confirmed the disease in the Essex abattoir - as reports on the 1967 Northumberland epidemic were very clear that speed was of the essence in controlling the disease. Many members of the general public started asking the same question that had crossed my mind - what was so terrible about this disease that demanded the extreme response of the contiguous cull?

            As I sat, flipping through my induction pack, listening to the explanation of the disease control policy, a line from one of my favourite childhood films ran through my mind. In Aliens, when Ellen Ripley discovers that the colony on LV421 has been overrun by the terrifying creatures that wiped out her entire crew in the first film, her solution is simple but effective.

            'I say we take off, and nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.'

            It occurred to me that someone high up in the ministry was a fan of the film too.

*

Despite my worries, the job itself was simple - far simpler than my normal day job. Every day we (myself and a technician) would be assigned a number of farms to check in Devon. We would drive to the farm entrances in our MAFF-assigned vehicles, park outside, then don disposable boiler suits, hats and masks, dunk our white Government-issue wellies into virucidal solution, and inspect every single animal on the farm for symptoms of FMD. If all was well, we would move on to the next farm. If we found anything suspicious, however, we would call in the back-up, who would slaughter the suspected animals and test them for the disease. If it was confirmed, then the contiguous cull would come into force - every cow, sheep and pig in a three-mile radius would be culled, and their bodies burned to prevent spread of infection.

            By the time I started at MAFF, there were a lot of bodies burning in Devon.

            If we ever found FMD, then we would be, from that point on, classified as 'dirty', and my veterinary services would then be required to assist with the culling, and the clean-up afterwards. By this stage, with up to fifty new cases being found every day, there was a lot of culling that needed to be done. The military had been called in to help, and 'clean' vets were becoming harder to find; hence the pay increase to attract new TVIs. Within a few hours of my training video, I was inspecting sheep on a farm near Okehampton, worrying that the few slides I had seen wouldn't be enough preparation for me to tell the difference between FMD and footrot. By now, the epidemic was at its height, and MAFF had introduced a 'suspected slaughter policy' - no more waiting for confirmation of the disease. If I saw lameness, would I be confident enough to cry wolf - and thus potentially condemn every livestock animal within a three mile radius to death?

            I was in a better position than some, however. A lot of the Spanish vets had never seen a case of orf - a relatively common disease of sheep in Devon, that caused blistering lesions around the teats, mouth and feet. If they suspected FMD, it didn't matter how many times the farmer pointed out they were actually looking at orf. All the animals on the farm would then be slaughtered, and if the case was deemed suspect enough, everything within three kilometres.

            Visiting a farm as a MAFF vet was a very different experience from visiting one as a normal vet. Some farmers were friendly and welcoming, but these were the exceptions. The majority were scared that we would find something on their farm, or suspicious that despite our extravagant precautions at their gate, we would bring the disease to them. Who could blame them? Farmers were compensated for the loss of their animals, but money doesn't go very far in alleviating the distress caused by watching everything on your farm get slaughtered and burned. Those were uncomfortable visits, farmers nervously showing you their animals, silently praying that you didn't suddenly order them to stop, to take a closer look at something, and speak the words that would mean destruction of everything they had built up.

            A couple of weeks into my work as a TVI, the Ministry for Agriculture, Food and Fisheries transformed into the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, or DEFRA. It must have been in the pipeline before the outbreak started - the wheels of government turn slowly - but at the time it felt like a response to the perception of poor handling of the crisis in the media. Don't worry - MAFF are no longer in charge of fighting the disease! DEFRA is on the case now. What it meant, in practical terms, was that one day I went to work to discover that all the headed paper had been changed from one logo to another.

            I worked for about two months as a TVI during the crisis, travelling from farm to farm - usually three or four a day, but some of the big units, especially large sheep farms, took up a whole day or more. I was lucky. The farmers I visited were lucky. I saw plenty of lameness; I saw footrot, and I saw orf, but I never saw anything that resembled foot and mouth disease. I made it through clean.

*

The final case of the outbreak was reported on a Cumbrian farm at the end of September. Movement restrictions were finally lifted in 2002, a year after the first case. DEFRA's contiguous cull policy had worked. FMD was once again eradicated from the United Kingdom, after the slaughter of around ten million sheep, cattle and pigs.

            I kept turning it over in my mind. FMD was a relatively mild, self-limiting disease in adult cattle. That was a hard thing to reconcile with the huge pyres of blackened, burning bodies that I, thankfully, only ever encountered on the news. The contiguous cull policy had worked. So would have taking off, and nuking the site from orbit.

            Here's the reason that FMD was taken so seriously by the Government: the economy, stupid. Affected cows suffer 'milk drop' - a reduction in the milk that they produce. This milk drop is usually temporary, but it can be permanent.

            There is, as I had suspected, all those years ago, a vaccine available for FMD. It's very effective, and relatively cheap. However, once you've vaccinated an animal, it is then impossible to test for the disease itself - the animal will test positive if the vaccine was effective. For this reason, the World Health Organization classifies countries according to their FMD status thusly: 1 - FMD present; 2 - FMD-free with vaccination; 3 - FMD-free without vaccination. The third and last group gets better access to export markets, so countries in this group work hard to stay there; it's fair to say that, in 2001, the UK worked very, very hard to stay there.

            There have been a lot of studies on the economies of the 2001 FMD outbreak - some of which say it was worth it, in economic terms, some of which strongly argue that it wasn't. It seems to be a close-run thing.[5] DEFRA has, since the outbreak, acknowledged that vaccination might be a sensible policy move faced with such an outbreak next time - vaccinations are allowed in some circumstances by the WHO in order to bring an epidemic under control.

            In case you missed it, I'll say it again - ten million animals were slaughtered during the FMD crisis of 2001 - the vast majority of them being sheep. It's since been confirmed that roughly one in three of the 'suspect' diagnoses were correct. Thanks to the contiguous cull policy, with the three-mile 'protection' zone, this means that something like ninety percent of those slaughtered were uninfected.

            Now, there's an argument to be made that all these animals would have been slaughtered anyway - we eat them, after all. As a counterpoint to that argument, consider this: slaughter in an abattoir is tightly regulated and controlled in order to minimise distress and discomfort to the animals. I have visited a number of abattoirs in my time. When it goes smoothly, the killing is painless, and very quick. It doesn't always go smoothly.

            At the height of the disease in Devon, ninety thousand animals were being slaughtered a day. Ninety thousand. On farms. By vets, by technicians, and by the army. If you think that it went smoothly, then I would suggest you are a poor student of human nature. None of the abattoir regulations were in place. Animals were not stunned prior to slaughter. They were not insensible at the moment of death, nor were they ignorant of the deaths around them. They were distressed, they were terrified, and then they were killed. Vets did what they could. Farmers did what they could. But that stark number of ten million animals, I can assure you, blurs an immense amount of suffering, fear, pain, and death into an easy-to-swallow statistic.

            Foot and Mouth is a disease of economic importance. I stayed clean during the epidemic of 2001. Somehow, I still feel dirty.

---

[1] I was very proud of remembering this point - it must have appealed to the SF writer in me; also, I honestly did remember that it was a picornavirus.

[2] a medical term, meaning 'it goes away by itself'

[3] Not strictly true - there have been a few reports of direct transmission from animals to humans, but these cases are very rare, not confirmed, and (just like FMD itself), get better very quickly.

[4] I won't mention it again, I promise!

[5] Here's some figures for the interested: getting the outbreak under control cost £8-10 billion pounds. Lost revenue for allowing FMD unchecked across the UK (and so ending up in the 'FMD present' group) could be £1.2 billion/year. Vaccination of all herds in the country would probably cost about £150 million. I can't find any figures for what the UK being downgraded to Group 2 would be.

Badgers? Badgers? We don' need no steenkeen' badgers!

As I'm sure you're all aware (in fact, it could hardly have escaped your notice), it's election time again. I know that you haven't been able to turn on a radio or go to a news website without reading yet more about the upcoming elections for president of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons. I'm personally so excited by the magnetic personalities on offer that it's got me in an uncharacteristically political mood.

I have been tempted to dip my toe into the tepid water of veterinary politics a few times recently; I can often be heard whinging that the RCVS never present the views of veterinary surgeons to the public, seeming to prefer to leave that sort of thing to the British Veterinary Association instead... and I'm already boring myself, let alone you. Suffice it to say that I've decided the best way to present the views of a veterinary surgeon to the public is to, y'know, present them to the public.

So, here goes. I wondered about talking about the recent much-covered horsemeat scandal, but quite honestly I struggle to find a lot interesting to discuss about it. As a vegetarian myself, I struggle to see the ethical difference between eating a horse compared with a cow, sheep, pig or chicken (or dog or cat, come to that), and almost everyone I've asked (meat-eater or not) has pretty much the same opinion. This may be a function of the circles I move in, or it may be that the media is trying to create more of a furore about the whole thing than there actually is (heaven forbid!).

Instead, I've decided to talk about badgers. I may not be eminently qualified, being neither a large-animal practitioner, farmer or ex-lead guitarist of Queen, but I'll give it a shot. I'm aware the title of the post isn't, perhaps, the most sensitive that I've ever come up with, but when I tell you that the other post I was considering was one about dog racing called 'Fifty shades of Greyhounds' then you'll begin to understand what kind of brain I'm working with here.

Right then, let's talk about tuberculosis. The bane of romantic poets everywhere, TB is a nasty, chronic bacterial disease caused by mycobacterium, a tenacious group of bugs that are particularly hard to get rid of. I don't want to make light of the disease it causes because it is, not to put too fine a point on it, a fucker. Treatable, but only with extremely long courses of antibiotics - and there are strains of it appearing that are resistant to almost everything we can throw at them - I do, however, want to have a little chat about why there's a whole load of badgers set to be killed in this country because of it (no pun intended) (okay, a little bit intended).

Before I share my thoughts with you on exactly how I feel about that, let's look at some background information. If you already know this stuff, then feel free to skip to the end (and if you don't really care what I think about it, then you're probably best just skipping the whole rest of the post, and finding one that has more jokes in it - maybe the one about the horrible kid I had in my consult room once, that's a good one - it ends with me zapping my testicles with radiation).

A cow, yesterday

Still with me? Good. TB, you see, is not just a disease that affects humans. It can affect most mammals, actually, though some seem more susceptible than others - and there are two mammals in particular that are going to concern us today. The first is the cow. Cows get TB, and this is a problem because if we drink their milk unpasteurised, or eat their meat raw, then we can get TB too. Consequently, we have control systems in place to isolate, cull and remove infected animals from the cattle population and prevent spread of the disease. I don't want to get too involved with these control measures, because they're easily found elsewhere, but the classic intradermal TB testing that make up such a large proportion of a large-animals vets time have hitherto been highly successful at dramatically dropping the incidence of TB in cattle herds. Dropping, but - crucially - not eradicating. 'Hitherto' snuck into the post a few sentences ago because, sad to say, incidence rates of TB have been on the rise in the UK since the turn of the millennium.

Why the rise? It's safe to say that no-one knows for sure - it could be a consequence of the way the TB test is carried out (for various reasons, the intradermal test is far from a simple test to either perform or to interpret), the move from many, smaller herds to fewer, larger ones, increased movement of cattle around the country, the foot and mouth crisis or, more likely, a combination of all that, as well as other things.

Speaking of other things, that brings us onto the other mammal we were going to talk about - the opposum!

Just kidding. I meant the badger. Badgers are another mammal highly susceptible to TB (something like 17% of badgers killed by cars are found to have lesions on post-mortem) and debates have long raged about whether they are part of the problem with the current increase in TB in cows or not. Again, firm evidence is hard to come by (as with so much in the veterinary world) but the work that has been done (like this, among many others) that is there strongly suggests that badgers do, indeed, spread TB to cows.

So, here's the problem. The TB testing culling programme, effective since it was introduced in the fifties, appears to be failing. TB cases in cows are rising, and the disease is spreading. Badgers, on the best evidence we have, appear to be reservoirs for the disease - and it's very, very difficult (some might say impossible) to treat a disease in one population without doing something about the reservoir of it in another population. Like, for instance, killing them.

That's the dilemma. Nobody wants to kill badgers (except the chap in the video above) but our current strategy isn't working. Vaccinating cows against TB is illegal under EU rules. Vaccinating badgers is practically difficult, expensive, and unproven. Studies - including the best known, widest and most scientific study carried out - the report by Professor John Krebs - do show that culling badgers does lower the incidence of TB in cattle herds - albeit by a potentially disappointing 16% overall.

Those are, as Joe Friday might tell you, just the facts, ma'am - I wanted to make a clear distinction between the facts of TB and my opinion on the upcoming on-again-off-again badger cull (at the time of writing, it's on again) because, to be honest, this is not a clear-cut case, and it's helpful just to think about the background itself before you come to a decision on where you stand.

Where I stand

I'm sitting, actually, but from here on in things will increasingly be coloured by opinion rather than fact, so consider yourself warned. Before I tell you exactly where I'm sitting, I'd like to frame the dilemma in slightly different terms. You see, I was working for DEFRA as a Temporary Veterinary Inspector during the foot and mouth (FMD) crisis early on in the millennium. Down in Devon, as things became increasingly desperate, the pay improved considerably. FMD paid for a fair chunk of my wedding, in fact, and I didn't feel bad, because I thought we were doing the right thing. FMD was a terrible disease, and we were eradicating it from the country.

That's how I felt until I saw the piles of burning bodies, and realised that it's possible to become numb to euthanasia. I don't want to delve too deeply into that emotional quagmire right now, but I began to question just how terrible a disease FMD was to prompt such apocalyptic action. It's not transmissible to humans, and the symptoms it causes in sheep are relatively mild. Cows suffer badly with it, but - man, that's a really big pile of burning bodies. The biggest problem with FMD is how infectious it is - it spreads like the proverbial wildfire - rather than the suffering it causes to the animals. It is, primarily, an economic disease.

Let's leave the pyres behind us, for the moment, because that's a whole different debate - but it helps to demonstrate the point I'm about to make. Back to some science. TB in cattle is caused by mycobacterium bovis. It's zoonotic - that is, humans can catch it - but, despite the massive increase in TB in cows in recent years, m. bovis makes up around 0.5-1.5% of cases of TB diagnosed in this country - so, you're about a hundred times more likely to pick up TB from another human than you are from a cow.

Of these 0.5-1.5% of cases of TB, the vast majority of cases were picked up from drinking unpasteurised milk, or eating raw meat - both of which could also catch you a number of nastier and more imminently fatal diseases than TB. In fact, from 1990 up to 2005 (the time the study above was written) there was 1 case of TB that was confirmed to have been caught directly from a cow.

One case, in fifteen years. You might be thinking that one case is 'too many', but my personal opinion is that is a somewhat naive way of looking at the world. Value judgements are, and should be, made on the basis of risk, every day. The chances of any of us catching m. bovis from a cow are, by any standards, remote.

Now let's look at the proposed solution (or a part of the proposed solution - I don't think anyone is suggesting that a cull is replacement for testing and culling) - killing at least 60% of the badger population in the proposed areas (I say killing, because, to be honest, that's what is being done, and, to be honest, culling is not the most subtle euphemism for it anyway). The science suggests this could lead to a reduction in TB of around 16%. The killing would need to go on for about 3-4 years, and would have these benefits for about 6 years afterwards. Presumably, after that, you repeat the cull, though I'm not entirely clear on this point.

16% reduction for 6 years. So that, in human terms, would equate to... um... bear with me... something in the order of 0.05 less human cases of TB in that time. That's not a percentage, that's actual cases of TB prevented. To put it another way - one twentieth of a case of TB would be prevented in this way.

Don't get me wrong - TB is a terrible disease. Not least because of the enormous burdens it places on cattle farmers. The financial hardship, and the emotional strain, of having your herd yet again placed under restriction, has caused enormous unhappiness and, I suspect, its fair share of ill-health and even suicides.

We can't get complacent. We have so few cases of TB in humans because of high standards of hygiene and public health, and because of TB testing preventing infected animals getting into the food chain.

But... I keep thinking of those piles of burning bodies. If your solution to a problem is the mass killing of an indigenous species from your home, then your problem needs to be severe enough to justify such an act.

Is it? I can't believe that it is. The cull is wrong.

Halal Slaughter

This isn't a full-blown blog post, but my mother contacted me tonight to ask if I would consider doing a post on Halal slaughter. She's just having a little trouble explaining why Halal meat may have some welfare issues to some friends. In lieu of a blog post, I sent her an email, which I have rather lazily reproduced here in case it's of interest to anyone else.

EDIT *I'd like to make clear something that a commenter reminded me right at the start of this post... over to Josh...


Just wanted to mention that a lot of Halal slaughter now allows stunning before slitting the throat in which case the process seems much more akin to traditional stun and bleeding, providing timings are kept tight. Jewish slaughter however, is still lacking in stunning.

*

And back to the post...

***

Hi Mum

This website explains exactly what Halal meat is http://www.halalcateringco.com/halal_meat.asp

However it contains a number of inaccuracies and glosses over the truth a bit. The bit about 'carrion' is crucial - it means that animals cannot be stunned prior to slaughter, as technically stunning (when done properly) stops the heart, and the meat would count as dead. So animals have their throats slit consciously. From this website...

'When carried out correctly the sudden drop in blood pressure to the brain renders the animal brain dead within seconds and many researchers have found Dhabiha to be less stressful and painful to the animal than modern western methods of slaughter.'

Sadly, this sentence does not apply to either cows or goats - they are unlucky enough to have a vertebral blood supply, unlike many other mammals. The details are here... http://www.animalwelfareapproved.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/TAFS-18-Why-pre-slaughter-stunning-is-important.pdf

This is an extra blood supply that runs along the spine and supplies the neck. You can research the details if you like, but this quirk of anatomy basically means that if you slit a cow's throat (i.e. sever it's carotid arteries), instead of leading to almost instantaneous unconsciousness (as it would in humans) this extra blood supply enables the cow to remain conscious for anything from 19 seconds to 120 seconds - which I would suggest is unacceptable. Some studies have shown brain activity 680 seconds (11 minutes!) after the throat was cut.

The extreme sharpness of the blade (called a 'shechita' in Jewish ritual slaughter, but is effectively the same blade used in Halal slaughter ) is also a problem - it's so sharp, and produces such a clean cut, that the carotid arteries retract and clot in some cases, preserving blood pressure, and thus consciousness. You'll notice my quote from the first website doesn't reference the 'research' that it mentions.

This 'ballooning' occurs even in animals that don't have the verterbral circulation, such as sheep and chickens, unfortunately allowing them to experience suffering as well - some studies suggest it may happen up up to 62.5% of cases.

The wikipedia page on shecitas outlines these problems http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shechita if you need a reference.

This page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zabiha explains the minimal differences between Jewish and Islamic slaughter. Both effectively cause the same suffering, except in one case the cow is facing Mecca when it has its throat slit.

I'm hoping that's a fairly unbiased look at ritual slaughter, but I think you can guess which side I come down upon...

Nick




***




Not a cheery blog post, but some points worth making, I felt!

A load of BSL - Lennox, Dangerous Dogs, and Breed Specific Legislation

Okay, I admit it, I'm more of a dog person than a cat person. Now, I'm aware that immediately puts me at odds with the rest of internetdom - it seems you guys only need a quick picture of a cat doing something cute to keep you all happy. All right, you've twisted my arm - here you go.

Maybe it's that you have to look after dogs a bit more - I need to walk them, which, if not necessarily keeping me fit, at least keeps me moving. Maybe it's because my first cat was something of a psychopath. Poppet, our current feline friend, is much friendlier - she yowls for food, she rolls on her back, does all the requisite cute stuff, and a bit less pissing on the carpet than her predecessor.

With Poppet, I can see the pleasure cats bring (she still does pretty horrible things to mice, though). Anyway, the point is, I can see the appeal of cats, and furthermore I can see how dogs can be less appealing. They're smellier, and bigger, and, let's face it, some of them are pretty scary - which is a helpful segue, because scary dogs is what I've brought you all here to talk about.

Much as I like dogs, you see, I've often found myself at the pointy end of some which really didn't reciprocate my feelings. The problem with being a vet - a bit like being a postman, I suspect - is that it's one of those things that seems funny to people. 'Ho, ho, my dog bit the vet,' that sort of thing. The other problem, of course, is that I'm generally being horrible to the dog in question, which doesn't do wonders for our relationships. It might seem like a cliche, but I can't tell you the number of times people have said to me 'Well, he's never done that before!' with a suspicious look in their eye, heavily implying that the attack I have just experienced was probably my fault. When Hitler invaded Poland, I suspect that Neville Chamberlain said 'Well, he's never done that before!' with a similar expression.

So, dogs can be vicious. They can even be dangerous. Cats can too - I've got the scars to prove it - but they generally don't attack members of the public. When dogs do (as I think might have happened right before I started writing this post) it's a problem.

Lennox


If you haven't got sick of Facebook yet, you may have noticed recently there's been a lot of pictures cropping up recently of proud owners standing next to their dog/cat/lizard, and proudly proclaiming something along the lines of 'Tiddles was a wonderful Chinese water dragon for fifteen years, but today, SHE IS LENNOX'. It certainly confused the heck out of me when I first saw it, but I finally worked out what they're going on about, and it's a pretty sad tale. Lennox is, or was, a dog from Northern Island, that has become another victim of BSL - Breed Specific Legislation.

Now, I'm going to be honest here - I don't know a great deal about the Lennox case. I don't know just how aggressive, if at all, he was - he certainly hadn't attacked anyone. But I can tell you that the legislation that led to his demise and, by the looks of it, martyrdom, is a big steaming pile of doggy plop.

Breed Specific Legislation


Okay, it's probably time to talk about this BSL that I keep teasing you with. Breed Specific Legislation is exactly what it sounds like - legislation which is specific to a certain breed. In the UK, it is the Dangerous Dogs Act (1991), and it is this that is supposed to protect the public from violent dogs.

It doesn't. It can't. The basic premise is flawed. Four breeds are covered under this act (and I can still remember them, because I had to learn them for my public health exam) - the Pit Bull Terrier, the Japanese Tosa, the Dogo Argentino and the Fila Brasilero (okay, okay, I had to check the spelling of the last one. It's been twelve years, all right?). Now, it's entirely possible that you have never heard of three of those breeds. It's even possible that you might think I have got my exams confused and have started reeling of the names of dishes from a Michelin-starred restaurant, but you would be incorrect, they are actual breeds. The reason you might not have heard about them is that there haven't been any documented attacked by any of these breeds except the pit bull terrier since the act was passed. Yay! A success, tempered only by the fact that I can't find any evidence for any attacks by these breeds before  it was passed, either.

Still, don't get me wrong - all the above breeds are scary creatures, and you really would not want to meet any of them in a back alley on a dark night. You probably wouldn't want to meet them on a wide boulevard in bright sunshine, either. I once briefly encountered a pressa canary - a massive slobbery-tooth machine that was considered for inclusion in the act - and described my experiences in this blog post.

So, all the above being the case, what is my (and other people's) problem with the Dangerous Dogs Act, and similar acts around the world the like of which Lennox fell victim to?

Well, there are two pretty major flaws with legislation such as this, both of which have consequences that lead to suffering in the real world. My job is all about reducing suffering, and therefore this makes me unhappy, and has inspired me to write a blog with frequent usage of the word 'legislation' - which was never something wanted to do (and you're reading it now as well; more suffering caused by BSL, damn it!)

The first problem is, as those heroes at Monsieur Garnier's world famous laboratory might have it, 'the science bit'

The Science Bit - Breeds and Species


Let's take a step back for a moment. Forget about dogs. Let's talk about humans for a sec. You know humans, right? Funny pale ape-things. You've probably met a few around, they're fairly easy to spot, especially when it's sunny. I imagine you're pretty confident in being able to tell the difference between a human, and something that isn't human.

Here's a problem, though. I'd like you to come up with a definition for a human. Imagine I have a really, really big piece of chalk, and based upon your definition, I'm going to put everything human inside the circle, and everything inhuman - parrots, Frosties, Piers Morgan - outside it.

Easy peasy, you say. Humans reproduce with other humans, to make humans, don't they? Well, yes, they do, but there're a couple of problems with that definition. Firstly, it uses the thing you're trying to define as part of the definition, which makes things confusing. Secondly, it means that every child and infertile adult 'human' now has to stand outside the circle, in the inhuman camp.

Okay, let's try again. How about... a human is a creature that has the potential to mate with others of its kind to produce an offspring, even if it can't actually do it as an individual.
Hmm. Not great. How do you measure mating 'potential'? And also, how does this distinguish the human race from, say parrots?

Let's try a different tack. How about 'Humans are the only creatures that wear digital watches, ride motorbikes, and build atom bombs.'

Okay, we've got some merit here. I think it's fair to say that, at least on Earth, no other species has managed to construct an atom bomb, so you haven't got any non-humans sneaking into the circle. The problem is, we haven't all done that, so there's going to be a lot of humans standing outside the circle gazing in jealously at Robert Oppenheimer and his digital watch. The same applies to pretty much any technological innovation you try to use as your definition - there will always be some beings that you consider humans that get left outside, because they don't own a microwave, or can't read, or whatever.

How about genetics? There's got to be a good definition there, surely? Well, here's a basic biological fact - humans have 23 pairs of chromosomes. Shall we try that?

This time, standing outside the circle, we have everyone who has Down's syndrome, Klinefelter's syndrome, and anyone also who has a chromosomal disorder. Also, we've got a few plants that have managed to sneak into the circle due to their own chromosomal abnormalities.

Okay, at this point, let's do what any sane person would do - give up and look online. Here is the dictionary definition of 'human'

'A member of the genus homo and especially of the species homo sapiens'


Hmm. Cop-out, because now we've got to define 'homo sapiens'. Further googling and research could be done at this point, but I'll save you time... there is no line you can draw. There is no simple definition of human, and the reason is obvious when you think about it.

We have evolved, as we all know, from a common hominid ancestor - an ancestor that lived many millions of years ago (if, incidentally, you don't know this, then you really should read more; if you already know this but just don't believe it, then I'm afraid I'm going to have ask you to kindly fuck off, because we're probably not going to get along).

Now, going back to our circle of humans, let's think about that. I'm assuming that you all feel that your fathers, sons, mothers, daughters, brothers and sisters all belong in that circle, and I'm not going to argue with you (unless you're Pier's Morgan's father/son/brother/sister or mother). But think of the implications for our ancestors, slowly evolving into homo sapiens over millions of years.

At every stage along that long, long journey down through time, the hominds were able to breed with each other, and they looked and behaved, by and large, very much like each other. If you explained the circle to them, they would certainly feel the same about their fathers, sons, mothers, daughters and so on; you'd get the same opinion everywhere you went, until you reached a point where you could no longer communicate with the natives, and you'd have to observe them instead, and draw the same conclusion yourself.

The very, very laboured point I'm trying to make here is this - it may seem that the term 'species' is very, aheh, specific, and that it refers to a very definite thing, but it really doesn't. The only reason we find it so easy to tell the difference between ourselves and chimps (who happened to share a common ancestor with more recently than anything else currently alive) is because all the intermediates along the way are dead. If they were still around we would find the concept of a definite 'human' as hard to grasp as it really should be. That simple chalk line that surrounds our species is nothing of the kind - it's more of a gradation, a gradual fading away from humanity into another 'species'.

So, although we generally manage to tell the difference between apes and humans (uncomfortable encounters in nightclubs excepted), when you try and pin it down scientifically - or, more importantly - legally - you begin to realise it isn't a simple task. And we have all this trouble with species! Now try and pass a law against a particular 'breed', and you run into all manner of trouble.

I like to think that I can tell a westie from a daschund, but you could keep bringing me westies that had shorter legs, longer snouts, on and on until at some point I would just say 'Er, he's a westie cross, isn't he?' - and the point that I would say it is different from the point from anyone else. You simply cannot legally define one breed from another - no blood test will tell you, and no two vets, anatomists or breeders would agree every time for every dog.

Problem One

So, this is a major - in fact, to me, the major problem with breed specific legislation. I told you it caused real suffering, and it does. Here's what happens - in fact, this is pretty much what happened to Lennox, as far as I can tell (as I say, I don't want to go into the specifics, because I really don't know the case) - the dog warden, or member of the public, looks at your dog, which, whether it is a pit bull or not, has the misfortune of looking like a pit bull - and if this sounds unlikely, bear in mind that a lot of staffie crosses have something of a pit bull look about them. They get picked up, impounded and summarily put to sleep if the 'expert' who looks at them agrees that they are a 'pit-bull type'. If you don't want your dog to be put to sleep, you can challenge the opinion in court. Eventually your dog may be off the hook, but it will have had to spend many months if not years waiting in kennels for an opinion that is just that; an opinion. No one can possible prove that a dog is or is not a pit bull.

The problem is compounded by the fact that, because these dogs are banned, many people are not all that sure what they actually look like. It's a not-infrequent experience for us to have the police, RSPCA or dog warden turn up at our practice asking 'Is this a pit bull?'. If we answer thought that it was, and no owner was present when the dog was found, the dog would probably be put straight to sleep, however friendly/aggressive or otherwise it was (I say 'probably' because I've never had occasion to find out; I've always explained the impossibility of making such a judgement call). Experts, as mentioned about, measure the dog against fifty-seven or so different traits to see if it fits into what we class as a 'pit bull'.

So, we get to the crux of the problem - BSL is legislation that is based in appearance, not demeanour. In effect, the Dangerous Dogs Act is really the Dangerous-looking Dogs Act. The first downside of this is, as we've already discussed, that dogs that happen to look a bit like pit bulls are unnecessarily destroyed or at least put through great suffering, much to the distress of their owners.

Problem Two


Now, if you've made it this far, you've probably figured out the second problem by yourself. No one has been attacked in this country by at least three of the four dangerous dog breeds since 1991 (and, quite possibly, ever). People are, however, still getting attacked by dogs.

Here's a study from 2008 in America about the breeds most likely to bite you. It's a teeny bit dry and wordy, and studies like this are notoriously difficult to do, but cutting through the chaff, you can find the breed most likely to bite you. You know what it is?

The daschund. The loveable sausage dog. Closely followed by the chihuahua. Now, fair enough, these breeds aren't often represented in serious dog attacks, for obvious reasons - that is still reserved for the pit bull. This site has a better overview of dog attacks, referencing the original papers if you're interested in looking into it further. The point I'm trying to make is this; dog attacks still happen, and they are very frequently from breeds not considered 'dangerous' - it might seem funny to be attacked by a daschund, until your Achilles' tendon in severed by a lucky chomp when you're trying to get away from it.

The dangerous dogs act makes no provision for any of this. It certainly takes no action to stop these things happening. With an amendment in the legislation, breeds can be added to it, or even individual dogs in extreme circumstances - and these are the circumstances you'll probably read about in the paper.

So, the basic problem is this - the Dangerous Dogs Act (1991 amended 1997), along with all Breed Specific Legislation - is based on a fundamentally flawed premise. It leads to dogs being put to sleep unnecessarily, and fails to recognise that there are many dogs out there that are a danger to the public but that don't happen to look much like a pit bull terrier.

Solutions


I do enjoy my moaning - you may have noticed - but I like it do be at least productive moaning. Can anything be done to help the situation?

Here's a very obvious point - it seems absolutely crazy to me that an anatomy should be the key decision-maker into whether a dog is dangerous or not. Surely the more important characteristic is whether the dog is, y'know, dangerous. Behaviourists should be making decisions like this, not anatomists. I understand that there are certain breeds that can be more aggressive than others, but this is trying to solve the problem from a step behind. The legislation should have clear guidelines, drawn up by behaviourists, not lawyers, about the kind of traits that make a dog unacceptably antisocial in our society. If they're taken in, then they should be tested for these warning signs, with and without the owner present, and taking into account the fear and stress the animal is under.

Also, let's not be unrealistic here. We've all heard that there's no such thing as a bad dog, but a bad owner. Now, I have met a few - a very few - genuinely scary dogs that I couldn't imagine any amount of training could ever have fixed, but they are very much the exceptions to the rule above. If we allow dogs in society, then some morons are going to either ignore the warnings that they need better control over their dogs, or they're going to actively train them to attack. There will always be dog attacks (whether they are on the increase or not, is, incidentally, quite difficult to prove, despite what you may have heard in the media. See here for a quick discussion) - all I am asking for is legislation designed with the problems I have outline above in mind; legislation which isn't a rush job (the DDA of 1991 was hurried through parliament after a spate of dog attacks) and which, if at all possible, please, does the frikkin' job it is supposed to do.

Today, I am Lennox. Hope you are too.