FOOT AND MOUTH MONTH
March 2001
This will go down as a vile month
With sappers burying long dead sheep
And
As Mordor. But that’s agribusiness.
Feed your beasts on funny stuff,
And kill the bugs and the meadow flowers.
And what do you expect? You wanna see
Nature at her bitching best?
You’ll have to come to town for that
And walk abandoned railway lines,
Or mooch about the derelict pits
And mills where no-one’s ever sprayed.
I step outside to fetch the bin
And the grass behind the garages
Just ticks with life that won’t make money.
So Foot and Mouth is back- this time on a farm in Surrey, or, at least, that's where it's been first detected- but the likelihood is they'll find it here, there and everywhere, because it's so contagious. The footage that was used to back the story on TV last night was presumably from the last outbreak- the dead cows being stacked like kindling, the smoking pyres.
I see (from this poem I've dug up) I was quite angry in 2001. in 2007 I'm more inclined to shrug. Yeah, this is the kind of mess human beings get themselves into. So it goes. The difference is not just that I'm older, it's that Iraq has happened in the meantime. What are a few dead cows and sheep beside the humanitarian disaster we've caused over there? Maybe anger is the more appropriate response but I'm all angered out. Anger just doesn't seem to get us anywhere, does it?