Viva! 8 York Court Wilder Street Bristol BS2 8QH Tel: 0117 944 1000 Fax: 0117 924 4646 email: media@viva.org.uk	The following was printed in The Times, November 2000 BSE - nature’s warning that intensive farming will destroy us The Phillips report on BSE/vCJD has profound implications for everyone in Britain. Because of the timescale involved in many dietary related diseases, it’s vital we learn the lessons from this catastrophe, if only for the sake of our children. For years, Viva! warned of the dangers from BSE; warnings based on the opinions of knowledgeable scientists - the same scientists the Government ignored because they didn’t like what they were saying. These scientists are still issuing warnings and they are still being ignored. Lord Phillips has identified intensive farming as one of the primary causes of BSE yet intensive farming continues - squalid, overcrowded units where feed is entirely unnatural and the conditions unsanitary. Almost all pig meat, chicken and turkey is intensively reared indoors - and even animals kept outdoors, such as dairy cows, are increasingly being pushed beyond their ability to cope. The result is a string of diseases that have to be controlled - often not very successfully - with a battery of antibiotics and other drugs. The warning signs couldn’t be clearer - deadly, uncontrollable superbugs which threaten human health, virulent new strains of salmonella and E-coli and growing epidemics of food poisoning from meat and dairy products. Major reports have warned of the catastrophe which beckons unless action is taken but the survival of the meat industry has again been put before human health. What we are doing to farmed animals is a welfare disaster - but an imminent human disaster also. The current glorification of pig farmers, because they are going through hard times, is doing no one a favour and is stifling debate. Government must act urgently on the evidence that is staring us in the face - modern, intensive farming is unnatural, unsustainable, cruel and the seeds of another human catastrophe are already germinating. But this one has even greater destructive potential than BSE. Tony Wardle Viva!