Local vet working at epicentre of crisis
(From The Orcadian dated March 29, 2001)

A local vet turned reporter who has answered the call for recruits in the battle to get foot-and-mouth under control spoke this week of the sheer scale of devastation in the worst-hit areas of the country.

Mrs Gillian Wylie, a former veterinary surgeon with local practice Northvet, joined The Orcadian in 1999, but last week she was called up to become a temporary veterinary inspector to deal with the foot-and-mouth crisis in Cumbria where, in her words, there has been "a real explosion of the infection." Vaccination is now being proposed to deal with the Cumbrian outbreak, where half a million animals are due to be slaughtered. Farmers in Scotland are divided over the need for a vaccination programme in Dumfriesshire.

Mrs Wylie, from Easter Greenigoe, Orphir, headed for her home town of Lockerbie in Dumfriesshire on Saturday, immediately entering the heart of the crisis area in Scotland.

"When you see it on the television it looks like some hellish inferno, but it is not like that. You see these wisps of smoke and then maybe a heavier plume, but not the huge fires. It maybe looks dramatic on the television, but it is quiet - it is much, much sadder; much more deep and painful than that," she said.

Evidence of the progress of the culling was immediate as she entered Lockerbie.

"The night I arrived down there were gun shots at the back of the house where sheep were being slaughtered and there were shots around here when I got back tonight, so it is going on all around you. Basically there is not going to be any sheep left in Annandale and Lower Nithsdale as things stand. The place is going to be empty."

On Tuesday she spent a difficult first day 'in the field', at a farm south-west of Carlisle, a long-established family farm with 300 head of cattle and 695 sheep, along with poultry and horses. It is classed as having had 'dangerous contact' due to the farmer having bought ten sheep from Longtown mart, where infected sheep are known to have been, five weeks ago.

Speaking on Tuesday evening, Mrs Wylie said: "You kind of know what it's going to be like, but it is still hard when it hits you that all these sheep and lambs you see are going to be dead in days.

"I was examining and blood sampling sheep to see if they tested positive [for foot-and-mouth], although they are going to be slaughtered anyway, so it has been pretty harrowing, hard to fight back the tears, so I'm pretty shattered tonight."

The young lambs, only weeks or even days old, will have to be killed by lethal injection.

"That's a job for the vets so it will likely be down to yours truly, so I'm not looking forward to that," she said.

Mrs Wylie, who will work for two weeks in Cumbria and then quarantine herself for a week to ensure she does not carry the infection back to Orkney, was one of 17 vets joining the Animal Health team at Hadrian House in Carlisle on Monday. A couple of weeks ago there were less than 50 vets at the base, now there are 150, including Spaniards, Americans and New Zealanders.

"They are pulling in the vets and the Army now and the red tape is being cut ferociously. Things are moving a bit faster now but by God they need to. There's been a real explosion of the infection in Cumbria."

Mrs Wylie is one of a number of people from Orkney who have joined the battle against foot-and-mouth in some of the worst hit parts of the country.

Two other Orkney vets, Mr Bill Carstairs of Woodside, Tankerness and Mrs Morag Spence of Beaquoy, Dounby have also been enlisted as temporary veterinary inspectors, while Rognvald Baillie, son of Ronnie and Agnes Baillie of Biggings in Toab, has been brought in to control vermin on farms infected with the contagion, after the animals have been culled.

Mr Carstairs, Mrs Spence and Mr Baillie have been working from "the bunker" in Dumfries for the last two weeks.

Agricultural officers, Neil McCartney, and Robert McGibbon who are based at SERAD offices in Kirkwall have also played their part, helping with administration at centres in Dumfries and Ayr respectively.