LONDON — The foot-and-mouth outbreak in Britain is not devastating British farm production. It is devastating farming's relationship with the rest of Britain. Less than 2 percent of Britain's livestock have been slaughtered either because they have the disease or because, though healthy, they might transmit it. Central England is largely free of the disease, which is concentrated in the border counties of Cumbria in the northwest, Devon in the southwest and Dumfries and Galloway in Scotland.
But though the disease is limited in scope, farming leaders have reacted as though it is an infinite catastrophe, against which no state measures could be too dramatic. At the start of the outbreak, over a month ago, farm leaders wanted to plunge the whole country into a state of emergency. They responded to the spread of the disease with panic and despair.
They demanded that no one from "outside" should step or drive into the countryside lest they spread the disease. The tone of hysteria in their voices did not abate until last week, when the army was given some responsibility for the mass killing and disposal of some animals in some affected areas. Only the sight of men in uniform, who draw their values and knowledge from outside the world of politics, had a calming effect. Only the army fitted the scale of farmers' fears. These fears, so unbounded, so trembling and despairing, are not a measure of the danger of foot and mouth disease; they are a measure of the insecurity the British farmer feels in the mixed world of global food production, multinational supermarkets and international environmental dangers.