Domino Effect

-- (A mind is a terrible thing@2 waste.com), April 18, 2001

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Tuesday April 17, 05:06 PM

Girl's heartache as pet cow culled

The tragedy of the foot-and-mouth crisis has been chronicled by an eight-year-old girl who kept a diary in which she wrote of the heartache at losing her favourite cow.

Jessica Cleminson is scarcely old enough to understand the magnitude of the disease but her thoughts and feelings, as detailed in her diary, depict the trauma caused when Ministry of Agriculture officials ordered her 14-year-old pet cow, Caroline, be killed.

News that Caroline and the rest of Jessica's father's 172-strong herd in County Durham were to be culled came the day after the little girl wrote that her pet was expecting a calf.

On Good Friday, Jessica wrote: "Dear diary, today I found out that we are in Category D and that is bad. That means I cannot leave the house much and it isn't fair." Alongside a colourful drawing of a cow, she added: "My favourite cow Caroline is having a calf, maybe twin calves."

But the following day, Jessica wrote a note in which she could not bring herself to write the word "killed". It read: "We have foot-and-mouth. Caroline has to be

... I can't even say it and she has to be .... with her baby inside. Please Lord, how come you did this to us?"

The diary, which was found under Jessica's bed at her home at New Hummerbeck Farm, creates perhaps one of the most poignant impressions of the effect this disease is having on farming communities.

Jessica even wrote the diary using coloured pens to reflect her mood - with red, yellow and blue writing on Friday showing she was still upbeat. On Saturday, the day the cattle were condemned, she wrote in black and circled two smudges with an arrow indicating "my tears".

Her father, Stephen, said: "We didn't know about this diary until my wife found it under Jessica's bed. We were heart-broken when we read it.

"The cow, Caroline, was a cow in a million - I have never known a cow like it. She was as friendly as a dog. The children would ride on her back. She would stand for ages with her head in your arms. The cow was almost human, she used to cry at times. Caroline cried when they came to put her down.

"She was within 24 hours of calving which made it all the worse because the expectation in Jessica was that she would have a baby. That was a terrible blow."

The Cleminsons had to get special MAFF permission for Jessica and her sister Laura, 13, to be allowed off the farm the day before slaughtermen came to cull 172 cattle and 18 pigs on New Hummerbeck and the family's other farm at Kirk Merrington, near Spennymoor.

Mr Cleminson said: "A soldier led my daughters down the lane with tears rolling down their faces. It was an awful situation."

He has written to Prime Minister Tony Blair praising MAFF and Army efforts to deal with the disease. In the letter he calls for major restructuring in farming, stating: "The present administration has had a rocky ride with the farming community. We have seen our profitability eroded so severely that I have been losing money for three years. I firmly believe that after foot-and-mouth you must address the question of a major restructuring of agriculture. All we want to do is make a living."

Girl's heartache as pet cow culled

-- (A mind is a terrible thing@2 waste.com), April 18, 2001.