My last steak for a while?

It is with a heavy heart that I blog at the moment.  On Friday evening, as UK readers at least will be aware, a case of Foot and Mouth was confirmed in Surrey.  A second case - within the protection zone - looks set to be confirmed on Tuesday.

No-one will easily forget the images of smoking pyres of dead animals - feet in the air - from 2001.  We just have to hope that we won't see their like again this time around. 

The situation was handled so badly last time that MAFF ended-up changing its name to DEFRA to try and disassociate itself with the disasater.  It seems that - on the one hand - they've done better so far this time by reacting so quickly and - on the other - maybe they started it all along.

The steaks we had on Sunday night came from a local farm shop, where the farmer wore a rather long face when I bought them on Saturday.  These steaks are a triumph of the British agricultural landscape - from grass-fed, extensively ranged beasts, hung and matured for twenty-eight days.  Lightly greased with olive oil they were ceremoniously placed on the barbeque and grilled.  Nothing more.  No fancy butters, no red wine sauce.  Just excellent quality sirloin steak.

Let's hope that the flames of the barbie are the only ones we see round our beef this summer.

To keep up to date with developments in the Foot and Mouth crisis, I recommend the BBC and Farmers Weekly.

[UPDATE - 10/08/07]

Nick's Tracing Paper blog provides more on this subject - along with a link to warmwell.com , run by Mary Critchley.  To quote from the site:

"Warmwell is an independent website, set up near the beginning of the Foot and Mouth crisis in 2001, and has been updated nearly every day since." 

tags: beef  

links: digg this    del.icio.us    technorati    reddit