Our View: Someone made the wrong call in FMD fiasco

It was inevitable that soon after the news about the outbreak of the foot and mouth disease, the search for people to blame would begin. If anything, it took a bit longer than usual because of the Green Monday holiday. Although the first cases were reported in Livadia last Thursday, the full-blown blame game did not kick off until Tuesday, when the holiday was over and the number of livestock units affected had increased to 11.

The House agriculture committee meeting on Tuesday was more like a public tribunal with the director of the veterinary services, Christodoulos Pipis, in dock. For deputies, the state’s veterinary service and the agriculture ministry were primarily to blame for what happened, because they did not take the necessary measures to prevent the spread of the virus, even though the virus had made an appearance in farms in the occupied north, two months earlier, in December.

The prevailing view is that not enough precautions were taken. For example, now that some 14,000 animals are to be culled, vaccines will be made available. Some 10,000 were due to be delivered on Wednesday, from the occupied area, which was sent 500,000 by the EU last December. Pipis said in the House that a country could not proceed with vaccinations without confirmed cases that would justify such an intervention. Vaccinations are considered a last resort measure as they would have a significant economic impact.

The idea, however, that the cases reported in the north were not considered to have been in Cyprus but in another country seems rather absurd. Nobody in his right mind could claim that precautions to prevent the spread of foot-and-mouth disease were unnecessary because the occupied area was another country. The reality is that measures should have been taken by the veterinary services as soon as reports of the outbreak of the disease in the north appeared last December. It was no joke, considering the number of vaccines sent by the EU.

This was the mistake. Someone high up at the agriculture ministry or at the veterinary service made the wrong call in deciding there was no need for any precautions, such as vaccinations, especially when it was claimed that even the wind – which cannot be stopped at the checkpoint – could carry the virus. This was another case of the poor planning – non-existent, to be precise – that has become the trademark of this government, which makes a point of running after events, because it is incapable of taking a decision at the right time.

It is honing its skills in crisis management while the taxpayer picks up the bill for its indecision. The government was untypically decisive and prompt in announcing the compensation that would be paid to the livestock farmers whose animals were culled.