From today's Guardian
May 23  2001
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Miles MacInnes, director of the northern property consultants CSH, based in Penrith, said he had been told privately by Maff that while 710 cases of foot and mouth had been recorded in Cumbria a further 550 farms had had livestock slaughtered as "dangerous contacts" - nearly 80% more than recorded - and did not appear in the official statistics.

In addition, based on one private ministry estimate, he said that animals on a further 1,800 farms in Cumbria may have been slaughtered because they were within 3km of an outbreak, resulting in more than 3,000 farms in the county losing livestock. "These statistics have not been published by Maff," he said. "If fewer cases are now being recorded why are so many animals still being slaughtered?"

From MAFF site today:

In the week ending 23 May, 62% of infected premises had slaughter completed
within 24 hours of the first report of disease by the owner. 77% were
slaughtered within 36 hours.

They have as many/more more people than ever out in the field and fewer
cases now so why the hell are they still not able to reach this target? In
fact they are failing to do so more frequently than in the past - what the
hell are all those people 'out there' doing - perhaps they are propping up
the bars in their hotels? Of course if they didn't have staff deployed on
the unnecessary and unjustified contiguous cull they might just manage the
24 hour cull on IPs which IS a major factor in controlling spread! It would
appear that not only is the contiguous cull unnecessary and unjustified but
it's probably removing resources from the one task that IS accepted as
being important.

See figures below - 'strange' isn't it that they can report stats on %
slaughtered at IPs within 24 hours for the week ending 23rd May but can't
report daily averages for weeks after week ending 13th May - but of course
they don't want us to know how dramatically the numbers have risen since
due to new hotspot(s). Whether or not they massage the data (and we know
they do) they certainly choose which numbers to publish immediately and
which they choose to sit on for a while! They also seem to be disposing of
more animals than they kill in recent weeks! Yet we're told there have been
no disposal backlogs for weeks.

Daily average of animals slaughtered
For week ending Sunday 13 May - 9,000
For week ending Sunday 6 May - 16,000
For week ending Sunday 29 April - 30,000
For week ending Sunday 22 April - 58,000
For week ending Sunday 15 April - 77,000
For week ending Sunday 8 April - 80,000
For week ending Sunday 1 April - 65,000
For week ending Sunday 25 March - 37,000
Daily average of animals disposed of
For week ending Sunday 13 May - 11,000
For week ending Sunday 6 May - 21,000
For week ending Sunday 29 April - 40,000
For week ending Sunday 22 April - 69,000
For week ending Sunday 15 April - 75,000
For week ending Sunday 8 April - 83,000
For week ending Sunday 1 April - 50,000
For week ending Sunday 25 March - 31,000

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Andrew Stephens BVetMed MRCVS
36 Falstaff Avenue, Earley, Reading, RG6 5TQ, UK
Tel: +44-(0)118-9756574 Fax: +44-(0)870-1337217
Email: andrews@mediavets.co.uk
Web: http://www.mediavets.co.uk
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Andrew, I have been keeping track of MAFF's figures this month (may 2001), ever since I
realised they were changing. (I've been puttting them up on my web site). I
have the MAFF figures  for the week ending the 13th May. There were208,000
killed that week, and I make that 29,714 as a daily average, rather than the
8,000 that MAFF had on its site, up till yesterday, when they put it up to
9,000. J Rider jrider@lineone.net