To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, one foot and mouth outbreak could be called a misfortune, but two looks like carelessness.rnThe only bright side for exporters is that procedures and paperwork were already in place to certify exports of heat-treated products to the EU and some additional countries. There was only a brief hiatus between the declaration of new cases of foot and mouth disease (FMD) and legal amendments.rnThose close to the handling of the outbreak have seen how woefully under-resourced the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) was to address the situation. This is a consequence of the haphazard hatchet-job on the civil service that was prescribed by the Treasury. In this case, the red tape itself has not been cut, but the wherewithal to produce and enforce it has. This is completely unacceptable.
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