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Though foot-and-mouth disease is harmless to humans, anxiety and misinformation are keeping people away in droves.
By SUSAN TAYLOR MARTIN
© St. Petersburg Times, published April 1, 2001
WINDERMERE, England -- To children the world over, Beatrix Potter is known and loved for her tales of Peter Rabbit.
But here in the Lake District of northern England, Potter was also a respected farmer of Herdwick sheep. Through the centuries, as these hardy creatures nibbled away at the coarse, wild grasses, they transformed a rugged land into every tourist's vision of a neatly tended, pastoral England.
Now, foot-and-mouth disease threatens not just Potter's sheep but also the enormous tourism industry they helped to create.
"Of all the possible problems we could have foreseen with the coming season, foot-and-mouth disease was not one of them," says Richard Foster, general manager of the World of Beatrix Potter.
Since Britain confirmed its first case of the disease in late February, attendance at the cozy little museum has dropped by up to 30 percent a day. And it's that way all over the Lake District, normally one of Britain's most popular destinations.
Hotels and guest houses have had to cut their rates just to attract the few visitors they have. Wooden rowboats remain tied along the shores of Lake Windermere. Empty taxis cruise the narrow streets, past stores that are selling little.
And as the peak season approaches, worry is turning into panic.
"The phone has virtually stopped ringing," says Mike Parson, who with his wife, Sandy, owns a bed-and-breakfast catering to non-smokers. "They're not ringing up for Easter or the bank holidays in May. We're not getting any inquiries for summer."
The worst thing, everyone agrees, is that this emerging tourism disaster never had to happen.
Most of the Lake District's scenic foot paths are closed in areas where sheep graze, for fear of spreading the highly contagious disease. Visitors also are barred from Beatrix Potter's farm and some stately old homes that sit on grazing lands.
However, almost everything else is open, including lodgings and four-star restaurants with prices that are cut-rate compared with those in London.
"We know how badly affected the farmers have been, and yet there's no need for this to affect us," says Allan King, spokesman for the Cumbria Tourist Board. "The Lake District is still open, there's no danger to anybody, the food is safe, the area looks exactly the same as it always has. The only indication is little signs on the footpaths."
People here blame the area's tourism woes on what they see as the slow-to-act British government and the quick-to-sensationalize British press.
In the past five weeks, the government has reversed nearly every one of its original decisions on how to fight the disease. The confusion has delayed the killing of infected animals and allowed the problem to get out of control, critics say.
Prime Minister Tony Blair didn't issue his first statement on foot-and-mouth disease until 11 days ago. And it was not until Thursday that he assured Americans -- who make up 20 percent of Britain's foreign visitors but are staying away in droves -- that there is still plenty to do in the countryside.
Meanwhile, British newspaper and TV have been full of apocalyptic scenes of lambs being led to slaughter and skies shrouded in smoke from giant pyres. The implicit message: Rural England is a place to be avoided at all costs.
Misinformation also abounds. One London tabloid ran a story that claimed anyone venturing into Kendal, a Lake District town, had to step into a bucket of disinfectant before entering a building.
An accompanying photo did not show a bucket in sight.
Another paper said the Lake District National Park was "out of bounds" -- an absurd idea, people here scoff, since Kendal and several other towns lie within the park's boundaries.
"I've never written to the British press before and now I've done it three times in the last few weeks," Foster says. "There's been some pretty cheap journalism."
Nor does he feel any more charitable toward the Blair government.
"They've done a pretty awful job . . . I feel that we have a government that is obsessed by image and that's what's causing a lot of confusion -- they're trying to present a coordinated image when there isn't one."
Since the days of the Industrial Revolution, agriculture has held an emotional grip on the British. The more urbanized they became, the more Britons fancied themselves a rural people at heart.
"I prefer to live in the country . . . that pleasant and unchanging world of realism and romance," wrote the London-born Potter, who made enough from her children's books to start a second career as a Lake District farmer.
Today, livestock growing -- sheep, cattle and pigs -- accounts for less than 1 percent of Britain's gross national product. As an exporter of meat, Britain ranks only average among the 15 members of the European Union. Even before the foot-and-mouth outbreak, the country's reputation had been sullied by swine flu and the devastating mad cow disease.
A few skeptics have suggested that the current "crisis" has been a whole lot of hoo-ha over nothing. They note that foot-and-mouth, unlike mad cow disease, has no effect on humans and is rarely fatal to the animals themselves.
They note that the disease is common in many parts of the world. That farmers will be compensated for their losses and that most of the slaughtered animals would have been killed anyway for Sunday dinner.
"Last week the ever-gullible BBC filmed a farmer close to tears over the possible loss of this beloved cattle to the slaughter police. It then showed him finding out that they were safe and driving them straight round to the local abattoir," columnist Simon Jenkins said in the Times of London.
"Farmers may be able to fool Newsnight each evening but can they really fool the rest of the nation?"
Yet these sentiments do not sit well with most Britons, especially those in the Lake District.
"The foot-and-mouth crisis is a crisis," says Foster of the Potter Museum. "My parents are farmers and it is no laughing matter. It feels like Russian roulette for them. They have to sit tight, look after their healthy animals and just wait for the dreaded news. It's frightening to go out into the field and wonder if today is the day.
"My father has spent 30 years of his life trying to improve the quality of his livestock. These brood animals will stay with him for 10, 20, 30 years. A lot of people see only the end product that goes to abattoir (slaughterhouse), but he takes great pride in these creatures."
The sheep are such a big part of the Lake District's image that they are pictured on postcards and souvenirs. The April issue of Cumbria Life, a glossy magazine aimed at tourists, has a photo of a Herdwick ram on the cover and three separate stories about Herdwicks inside (written before the foot-and-mouth outbreak.)
It is to see the sheep, and the idyllic landscape they help maintain, that millions of people come to the Lake District each year. At the first hint of spring, visitors amble along glacier-carved lakes, climb the rocky fells and wander through the vast fields of daffodils immortalized in Wordsworth's poem.
Feeding and lodging them has become a huge business.
In Cumbria, the county that includes the Lake District, 25 percent of the population works in tourism. The percentage in the district itself is thought to be much higher because this is the area where most visitors stay.
For years, Chris Gabbott worked as a master chef at an exclusive Lake District club. But he and his wife long dreamed of running their own guest house and restaurant.
"We decided it was time to make a change," he says. "It was the wrong time."
Just 18 months out on their own, the Gabbotts found themselves with an unwelcome guest: foot-and-mouth disease. Bookings this season already have dropped about $10,000, in a business that takes in only $120,000 a year at the best of times.
Yet on Thursday, the Gabbotts eight-bedroom guest house was among the very few in the Lake District to display a "No Vacancies" sign.
To draw customers, Gabbott is banking on the power of the Internet. Those visiting his Web site get a quick reply to any questions. He has also has links to the Cumbrian and British tourism boards, so visitors can get the latest information on what's open and what's not.
With so many foot paths closed, Gabbot got out a map and devised alternative routes where guests can safely walk and enjoy the scenery. And he also touts a three-course gourmet dinner featuring such entrees as chargrilled salmon topped with lobster butter. The price? About $25, less than half of what it would cost in London.
"You've got to be aggressive and go for it," he says. "It's no good sitting back and saying it's a catastrophe."
Gourmet meals are also a draw at the Miller Howe Hotel and Restaurant, a 12-bedroom country house filled with antiques and set on several acres with a stunning view of Lake Windermere.
Since the foot-and-mouth outbreak, business has been mixed. "Last Sunday we had 65 for lunch and 34 for afternoon tea and we were as busy as we could be," says owner Charles Garside.
However, there have been some cancellations, with images of burning sheep apparently scaring off prospective guests. Some have even asked whether there is enough to eat or if they should bring their own food.
Before buying the hotel, Garside was a top editor at both the Times of London and the Evening Standard, a tabloid. The journalist in him is aghast at how the media have covered the foot-and-mouth outbreak.
"Contrary to the overwhelming impression in much of the British press, the countryside is still open," Garside wrote recently. "Open, but seething that the media risk turning an undoubted crisis for the farming industry into a catastrophe for shopkeepers, guest houses, hotels, attractions and all forms of businesses in the unsubsidized tourism sector."
John Nicholl is among the many small business owners who are not directly involved in tourism, but still suffer when it does. Sales at his butcher shop have plunged 75 percent because struggling restaurants are buying less meat and the number of visitors who rent cottages and do their own cooking has dropped dramatically.
Nicholl's view of how the government and media have reacted to the foot-and-mouth outbreak?
"It's a complete joke and I'm not the only one to say that."
As you drive north through the Lake District, there is little evidence of the disease except "NO ACCESS" signs at foot paths and disinfectant mats laid across roads and at farm entrances.
It is not until you reach the Carlisle area that you see a few plumes of smoke, and it is not until you get near the Great Orton Airfield that you see cow and sheep carcasses piled up by farmhouses like so much cord wood.
Every five or 10 minutes, big trucks filled with dead sheep drive up to the former Royal Air Force base and dump their grisly cargo into huge earthen trenches. In they slide, 400 or 450 at time.
In the three days since the airfield was turned into a graveyard, at least 35,000 sheep have been buried here. There is room for hundreds of thousands more.
"We will never forget all the innocent animals who have been murdered," reads a card on a large bouquets of flowers left at the airfield entrance. The Blair government initially rejected burials, opting instead to burn sick animals and those at risk. It also refused to call in the army for fears soldiers' presence would create a crisis air as Britain prepared for a national election.
But it was taking so long to dispose of carcasses that the disease spread faster than anticipated. Now the army is helping to slaughter and bury animals.
Even for soldiers, it is a tough sight.
"It's thoroughly depressing," says Lt. Col. Angus Taverner, an army spokesman. "The sheep keep all those beautiful fells in shape. They are what people come to the Lake District to see -- fluffy sheep bouncing about.
"Cumbria is a deeply rural, agricultural county and the sheep are the heartbeat. They are an important part of what makes Britain tick."
-- Susan Taylor Martin can be contacted at susan@sptimes.com