Agricultural History Review, Volume 54 Part 1 (2006), p. 170

The first recorded outbreak of foot and mouth disease (FMD) in Britain began in August 1839. It continued to spread until the end of 1841, but never disappeared completely, and there were several further waves of infection, each lasting a year or two, through to the 1860s. It began to be accepted as an unpleasant, unfortunate, but unavoidable feature of farming life that had affected almost every parish in the country at one time or another. Animals recovered from it, and farmers and dealers continued to take them to market. At big markets such as Smithfield the floor sweepers filled baskets with the shed hooves of infected animals. The contrast with the 2001 FMD outbreak, in which many of the millions of animals that died were themselves probably uninfected, but happened to be within three kilometres of an infected place, could hardly be greater. This book explains how the change came about.

It was, Dr Woods argues, largely an accidental creation of the nineteenth century. The symptoms of FMD appear to have been more severe in more highly productive pedigree animals, and aristocratic breeders co-operated with protectionist Tories to sponsor the 1864 Cattle Diseases Prevention Bill, which was withdrawn in the face of opposition from Liberal free traders and the meat trade. But an outbreak of cattle plague in the following year led eventually to the 1869 Contagious Diseases of Animals Act. It was this Act, and its successors up to 1884, that produced, according to Dr Woods, the widespread perception of FMD as a dangerous plague rather than a common disease. Stricter controls produced a greater awareness of the prevalence of FMD and its consequent cost and contagiousness. They also had a greater impact outside the farm gate through the bringing about of cancellation of markets and fairs. At the same time, the rise of refrigeration produced a dead meat trade, and so reduced the fear of meat shortages caused by controls on the import of live animals. In the years of freedom from infection following the 1884 Act, familiarity with FMD was replaced by fear of the unknown. And finally, the bans imposed on imports from countries with FMD by the USA, Canada, and Australia would have had no impact on commercial producers in the UK, but significant effects for pedigree breeders attempting to export breeding stock to those countries. Thus when FMD reappeared in 1892 it was met by a slaughter policy, this time accompanied by compensation for animals lost.

The subsequent history of FMD in the UK is about the maintenance of this policy in the face of opposition from foreign suppliers, scientific controversies over the epidemiology of the disease, and the development of effective vaccines. It involves a series of official enquiries, the perception of pedigree exports as a sign of national superiority, ‘the “spin”, subterfuge and scientific manipulation that characterized the British government’s response to the disease threat’ (p. 53) in the interwar years, especially in relation to Irish and Anglo-Argentinean trade, the perennial problem of pig swill, offensive and defensive germ warfare, and the varying powers and influences of civil servants and politicians in the Ministry of Agriculture, the veterinary, medical and scientific professions, the meat trade, and pedigree livestock breeders. The result is a rich mixture of political, scientific and agricultural history.

In part this is history as polemic. Dr Woods is clearly unconvinced of the value of the slaughter policy, and sets out its detailed history to demonstrate that it was by no means the only possible response in the UK, just as it was inconceivable, until recently, in the different circumstances of continental Europe. In consequence it raises some interesting questions about the role of history, and the extent to which it can effectively contribute to what is clearly an ongoing policy debate. But it is more than this. It is also an excellent example of the sort of history of science and technology that tries to go beyond simple explanations of how initial misconceptions were replaced by present enlightenment as a result of the heroic efforts of the pioneers. In an age when books often become too long for their own good this one is admirably short – 150 pages of text and another fifty or so of notes and bibliography – but, ironically, it might with advantage have been longer, to set its discussion in the context of this expanding science and technology history. Similarly, given the nature of her polemic, it would have been interesting to have had more comparative material: on FMD in continental Europe, for example, or FMD compared with leprosy, which might be seen as a manufactured human plague, or with salmonella, which might perhaps have been treated by slaughter, but wasn’t.