WHETHER or not the ruthless foot-and-mouth massacre succeeds in containing the disease, there's another aspect that should trouble us. The news management of the cull has been a brain-washing exercise worthy of Dr Goebbels, Hitler's master of propaganda. And if that's disputed, the only alternative view is that those responsible for the cull have been disgracefully ignorant of the facts.

When culling started, the possibility of vaccination wasn't raised. The first reference I saw to it was in a letter to the Daily Telegraph on February 24, four days after the first confirmed outbreak. The absence of any mention of vaccination over the next few days tempted me to suspect that the Telegraph reader was misinformed.

When the vaccine option became widely known, its use was said to mean the loss of Britain's disease-free status, costing exports. It was implied the loss was permanent. But disease-free status returns a year after the last outbreak following ring-fence vaccination, or two years after full vaccination.

The impression was also given that vaccinated animals would have to be destroyed because they could unknowingly harbour the disease. But there are several tests to distinguish infected animals.

From a human point of view, the infection doesn't matter anyway. Meat and milk from animals that have had the disease or been vaccinated is perfectly safe. The undoubted reluctance of most of us to consume it is largely due to the demonising of the disease by the Ministry of Agriculture and the NFU.

Unable to say outright that the disease is "dangerous", they have deployed the term "highly contagious" to suggest the same thing. Of course the common cold is "highly contagious", yet poses no risk.

On April 2, when Tony Blair effectively postponed the General Election, his Agriculture Minister Nick Brown conceded on Channel 4 News that there was a "compelling case" for vaccination. Insisting that the counter arguments were even more "powerful", he said - the key point - that if vaccination were to be adopted, a vital first step would be to overcome the "negative perception" of it.

Swollen by a million or so "welfare animals" - those imprisoned in fields farmers can't enter - the scale of the destruction is now completely off the graph of civilised response. To our shame, an African tribe is offering advice. The Kenyan Maasai regard the premature slaughter of any cow as sacrilege. They treat foot-and-mouth outbreaks with a mixture of animal urine and salt.

Appalled by the slaughter from the outset, my early objections were ethical - a belief that animals deserve more respect. The knowledge that, scientifically, there is absolutely no need for the slaughter and consequent devastation of the rural community, heightens the sense of horror. The monster to be defeated is not a relatively-mild animal disease but the insensitivity that can countenance a solution of such grotesque enormity.

Dismally, William Hague can do no better than call for a speeding up of the slaughter. Yet the Army is already having to appeal for volunteers to shoot animals, and Maff, running short of burial sites, is reportedly considering burying the animals above ground. A Maff official says: "The piles of corpses could be landscaped over and you wouldn't know they were there."

Oh yes we would. They would be monuments to one of Britain's greatest and most unfeeling acts of folly. Portugal, one of several pro-vaccination EC nations, is poised to inoculate all its cattle if even a single case appears in neighbouring Spain. Back here, seven weeks into the crisis, our Government hasn't yet sought permission for the mass vaccination that will probably be necessary in the end. So animals die and rural England faces economic and environmental ruin. Get real, Tony Blair. Instruct our vets to do what they are primarily trained for - save life. Order vaccination. Now.

Published: Wednesday, April 11, 2001