As foot-and-mouth spread, the government said: ‘Don’t worry, everything’s under control’

In March 2001, the epidemic was reaching breaking point. But, as Michael McCarthy, Stephen Castle and Nigel Morris reported, then agriculture minister Nick Brown thought everything was just dandy

Then agriculture Nick Brown faces the press after the NFU Great British Food Conference (Tom Craig/The Independent)

The government’s assertion that the foot-and-mouth crisis remains under control was being pushed to the limit last night as half a million sheep faced slaughter, the number of cases climbed towards 200, and an Irish minister said the outbreak was making Britain “the leper of Europe”. The two men in charge, the minister of agriculture, Nick Brown, and the government’s chief veterinary officer, Jim Scudamore, continued to use the words “under control”, even while revealing startling dimensions to the outbreak.

The biggest of those was the threat of slaughter for up to 500,000 ewes and lambs spending the winter away from their home farms. They may have to be killed for animal welfare reasons if returning them is seen as too great a risk.

Their slaughter, compensation for which would add up to £50m to the cost of the outbreak, would mean the present incident would comfortably surpass in scale the 1967 epidemic, in which 442,000 animals died. Until yesterday, a total of 155,000 animals had been earmarked for slaughter, of which 116,000 had been culled.