26 April - 2 May 2001
Issue No.531
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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 26 April - 2 May 2001 Issue No.531 |
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Saving Hansel and Gretel
Television footage shows West Country farmers in floods of tears as they watch the funeral pyres of their herds and flocks, saying sadly: "But I knew each one by name!" It wasn't the best time to arrive in England, currently engulfed in yet another agricultural disaster, nor the best to be travelling on to Canada. The British farming industry, still recovering from the ravages of bovine spongiform encephalitis (BSE, or mad cow disease), was more than seven weeks into a harrowing outbreak of so-called foot-and-mouth disease when I was due for a weekend in England en route from Cairo to New Brunswick. I was highly anxious not to take the virus with me, as I had every reason to worry -- my Canadian home is a farm, and I keep goats.
Hansel and Gretel frolic safe from foot-and-mouth
Hansel and Gretel -- the goats at the centre of my distress -- came to our farm almost two years ago, shortly after I attended the annual society bash in my local town. The Earth Day Auction takes place every spring, with local businesses and artists donating gifts that are auctioned to raise money for environmental causes.
Cute, I thought, when I saw the photo, but too much trouble. Now I looked around the room. I noticed that everyone had placed their cards firmly on the table. Wasn't anyone going to offer them a home? A few desperate moments later, I realised it had become my duty to raise my card, especially when I heard someone at the next table mention grilled goat. Frantically I pitched my bid against the next table, and frantically they replied with a bid against mine, until they gave up and the hammer fell, and I was the new owner of two baby goats at three times the market price.
Hansel and Gretel are thoroughly spoilt. They live in a white clapboard barn with a red front door and a sign that says "Gingerbread House" in white "icing" paint on a giant chocolate chip cookie. They have lace curtains at the window and a witch weather-vane riding her broomstick over the eves. There is an acre of rough pasture with boulders to climb on, and which backs into the forest so they have plenty of shade. The kids' bushy diet is supplemented with fresh hay, goat ration and whatever my farming neighbours think they may fancy -- maize stalks is one of their favourites. The kids are friendly and sweet-natured, and they try so hard to be good and not to get loose and eat the flowers. The thought of carrying foot-and-mouth disease home to these pampered brats filled me with horror.
I called the Canadian Embassy in Cairo, only to be answered by a voice mail message. I don't like talking to machines, so I tried Air Canada. The line was busy. An e-mail arrived from Canada. Since the virus could be carried on clothes and hair, as well as shoes, no one who had been on a farm or rubbed shoulders with a farmer within the last two weeks could enter Canada. Foreign travellers were banned from bed and breakfasts in New Brunswick. Shoes had to be discarded on arrival. My friend would meet me at the airport with a change of shoes and clothes and a bottle of shampoo.
I packed separate clothes to wear in England and flew to London via Amsterdam. At Amsterdam a flight announcement said passengers entering Holland would be requested to walk over a "disinfected" mat.
I needed advice. I wanted to know exactly how I could prevent carrying foot-and-mouth disease to my kids, the dairy farm, the resident moose and white-tailed deer populations and the rest of Canada and North America, not to mention the llamas of Peru. (Too late for Argentina, I heard with dismay).
At Heathrow I asked British Airways customer services what travellers needed to know. They told me the rules changed by the day and that rumours were rife. The latest one concerned banning chocolate. "What's the use of posturing with silly rules about chocolate?" I moaned. The spokesman was sympathetic, but powerless. "We can only go by what MAFF [the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Fisheries] and the host [landing] airport tell us," she said.
All lines to the Canadian High Commission and Air Canada were busy. I rang MAFF (also jeered locally as the Ministry of Fish and Chips), where a spokesman told me no meat or cheese could be carried abroad. When I asked if that was all, she said firmly: "That's all that's being implemented."
I filled my weekend in England with reading as much as I could about the disease and its progress, which wasn't hard since the papers, television and local conversation (I was staying in the country) was concerned with little else. Although we were at least two counties from the nearest outbreak, all public commons were cordoned off with police tape and entrances to public footpaths blocked with piles of earth. Mats of disinfected straw lay across farm gateways, although drivers could easily get out of their cars and tramp around without disinfecting or de-muddying their shoes.
Without exception, everyone I spoke to was appalled at the way the epidemic was being handled and outraged at the mass cull. No one understood what MAFF was up to. "I grew up on a farm," one friend told me, "and all we did when there was a foot-and-mouth outbreak was scrub up and wash our boots." Townies and country folk alike were blaming the current epidemic on modern farming philosophy, whereby animals are treated as commodities and trucked from pillar to post as such. Since all livestock transport was banned, sheep and cattle in infected areas were suffering horribly, with farmers forbidden to bring in animals stranded in outlying pasture. New-born lambs were drowning in mud after more rain than the country had seen for years. Farmers, the public, and even army personnel roped in to do MAFF's dirty work were horrified and often traumatised.
The British sense of humour still managed to raise its head, although the second time I heard the tale from someone who swore it happened to someone he or she knew I realised it was an urban -- or, should I say, rural -- myth. A farmer caught a couple of hikers crossing his land and asked them what on earth they were doing. "It's all right," they said. "We're vegetarians."
The Sunday paper rumour was that the disease had been carried into Britain in infected sandwiches carried back by volunteers working in Mongolia for a youth organisation. "Oh yes," my hostess said dryly when I read this out at breakfast. "Last week it was food brought into a Chinese restaurant."
On Monday I rang the Canadian High Commission, again. Again, the lines were busy. All day. But I did get through to Air Canada. The spokesman said no food could be carried into Canada. "You'll be asked to walk over a mat on boarding and landing," she said, as if this would solve everything.
I called a veterinary office and asked the duty nurse what I should do, and for the first time I got some concrete advice. When their vets and nurses visited cattle or sheep farms, she said, they didn't return to the office until the next day, after they had showered, scrubbed up and put on clean clothes. She offered to let me have some disinfectant.
She said clients had asked about vaccination for pets and livestock, but no vaccination was allowed until MAFF said so. "If they vaccinated in Canada, it would be tantamount to saying they had a problem," she added pragmatically.
At Heathrow I asked the Air Canada ticket sales clerk whether there were any restrictions on entry if one were visiting a farm. She had no idea. There were no precautionary notices, so I asked the Air Canada check-in clerk what passengers could expect. She said one couldn't take meat or dairy products. I volunteered that I was going to a farm. Then you'll have to put that in when you fill out the form, she said. I asked her if all they could do was rely on the honesty of passengers. "We're hoping people will be responsible," she said. "But you won't get 100 per cent honesty in this world."
In the washroom, I changed my possibly germy shoes, throwing the old ones in the waste bin, put my coat in a plastic bag for future dry cleaning and put on a thick, clean jersey. I had washed my hair before I left for the airport.
Despite what I'd been told, there was no disinfectant mat on boarding the plane. The first mention of the virus was when we landed in St John's, Newfoundland. We were told not to bring in any meat or dairy produce.
At Halifax, my destination, we had to walk over a soggy rubber mat. This was the only precaution for the average passenger, but because I was going to a farm I had to go to "agriculture" to get sprayed. I told the officer there I had already ditched my shoes and was wearing fresh clothes, so he said I was "clean." He said agricultural experts flying back and forth were taking the precautions outlined by my veterinary nurse. "I wish everyone was as responsible as you," he sighed.
I asked how he could be sure people were honest. "We aren't," he said. "We've been promised a beagle. The bigger airports have already got one. It sniffs out food."
Once I arrived home, I telephoned Dr Allan Mclean at the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, who told me that regulations and guidelines were listed on the agency's Web site. Apparently, it's up to the individual to look them up. Air Canada personnel ought to have been aware of the restrictions, and should have handed out notices to passengers, Dr Mclean said. All passengers should have been informed that anyone who had visited a farm in Europe within the previous two weeks should not visit a farm or a zoo in Canada -- which, with the United States, New Zealand and Australia, was one of the few countries free of foot-and-mouth -- in the following two weeks. However, he conceded that the chance of carrying the damp- and cold-loving virus on one's clothes in a warm, dry plane was remote, and that the weakest point of entry was raw sausage and unpasteurised soft cheese.
It was clear that the information being given to passengers was inadequate, but I felt I had taken every possible precaution apart from not flying at all. Nonetheless, I shampooed and showered before I went to see Hansel and Gretel in their snug, still snow-bound Gingerbread House. Now I'm wondering: will they enjoy a juicy Egyptian date? Or will it lead to premature tooth decay?
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