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Cow Madness in England

Front Burner | NEWS ANALYSIS

Foot-and-mouth disease is serious enough without ignorant commentators misleading the public.

March 21, 2001|EMILY GREEN | TIMES STAFF WRITER

The basic difference separating the people who feed us from the chattering classes is that farmers and cooks are bound by laws of nature. Milk comes from cows, beef from steers, eggs from hens, etc. These products have to meet certain standards and pass repeated inspections.

But pundits can say whatever they like. Pigs might fly. So few of us have agricultural experience these days, whatever they say can be believed by millions and repeated for years before anyone who has even, say, set foot on a farm might move to correct it.

Writers like David Cox in the British New Statesman magazine think the U.K. would be better off without farmers. Britain's is a "knowledge economy," he avers. Farming is very World War II; the danger of food shipments being intercepted by German U-boats is past. "Instead of struggling to feed ourselves from our own puny acreage, we should buy in the best and cheapest food that the world can provide," he says.

He doesn't explain how they would know what they were eating once they unpacked it.

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