The words farming and crisis are all too frequently joined, creating sympathy for farmers and thereby scope for the excessive leverage the farm lobby can exert for compensation. The media reaction to the discovery of an isolated outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) on a farm in Surrey moved quickly into this supporting role, with much coverage of the possible consequences. No one wants a repeat of the 2001 debacle, but there are many reasons to believe that the lessons have been learnt and the outbreak will be brought swiftly under control.

From the outset this has been treated as a government rather than an agricultural issue. The prime minister cancelled his holiday and took part in a meeting of government’s Cobra emergency committee the day the outbreak was announced. In 2001 it was almost a month before Cobra became involved. It took just three hours on Friday to impose a ban on the national movement of animals compared with three days last time. Animal records are now much more comprehensive, greatly reducing the likelihood of unrecorded movements. Underpinning this rapid reaction are the government’s contingency plans, developed in response to the errors of the 2001 outbreak.