Agriculture in the UK suffered another blow this month with the arrival of Bluetongue at a small farm in Suffolk. Within days it had been confirmed at a number of other farms up to 50 miles away. Currently there is no vaccine, and as the disease is carried by midges, no way of controlling it's spread.
After initially killing infected animals, the government department responsible, DEFRA, who were desperate not to declare an outbreak, finally came to the conclusion that is was indeed an outbreak, and there was no point in a cull. Instead, they are praying for a cold winter.
The odd thing is, there have been over 8,000 cases in Germany this summer, along with large infections in Belgium, Holland and France. The virus has been making its way from the Mediterranean over a succession of warm winters so it was hardly a surprise when it appeared here, yet the government seemed to have no contingency plan at all.
For me it meant a week chasing around trying to find farms late in the day against newspapers deadlines, with no firm grasp of exactly where the latest infection had appeared. My pictures were used throughout the week in the Daily Mail, The Guardian, The Independent and The Times.
Licence photographs here.
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