My headmaster at primary school was a terror to behold. His mode of punishment by today’s standards and CRB would have landed him huge penal sentences and deregistration from his profession and ever working with children, and not the least the chance to enter the list of sex offenders (read child molesters). According to his work ethics, failing to score a mark set way ahead of the exam was translated to the number of canes equal to the marks in default. His other pastime correction was pinching the inner thighs, and since those were the days of shorts, his hands often went a bit high up and ended up wet. His spanks to the bottom were far worse than canes- I bet that could have been an accusation of rough petting, and especially as he did not distinguish boys and girls when “roughing up” the delinquents.

However, he was not the worst when it came to dishing out punishments. There was one teacher reputed “man-eater” for attacking his victims with his teeth. Yet, another had a way of converting offences to man-hours of child labour. These were expected, as those before us had gone through the same and survived to be model citizens.

However, today, my daughter even questions my role in correcting her offences, leave out the far removed teachers. “Telling her off” can delete our friendship until I have apologised and bribed her with a trip to McDonalds. Not even the Super-nanny US Special that I enforce we watch together so that some manners can percolate to her mind helps; for soon after, she says that even children have their rights too, including to call social services or the police to report their parents for threatening them. Granted, NSPCC is very much on track as many children too face huge traumas in the hands of their very protector parents and guardians, and their close siblings, uncles, aunts and grandparents. True, many are those who ascribe more love and devotion to hobbies, pets and cars than to their children.

For that is often the mark of success to many- a good business, career, or physique.

Having grown up on a farm neighbouring a small village market, I witnessed the stark reality of deprivation from early. The competitions for food oft left me aghast that anyone should result to crime to gain a morsel. At the local slaughter yard, it would be a free-for-all man, stork and beast scrambling for offals and hooves. And the butcher would be blandishing his knifes since those were part of his stock to use for broth. Even when a cow died mysteriously, the butcher would still haggle for the carcase when he came for the skin. I had heard that the carcase secretly ended up in his stall. As expert veterinary/health inspections, quarantines and rigorous EU restrictions did not apply there and then, the test for the potency of the diseased carcase was the “explosive sound” of the chunk of meat buried in hot ash. The butcher could tell by the sound if the animal had died of rinderpest, ECF, foot-and-mouth, black quarter, red water, anaplasmosis, digana, bloat, hunger, poison, strangulation, natural causes, old age, or any other hitherto unbeknown disease. He could tell. And with his wisdom, he would go about discarding certain organs- liver, bladder, testes, brains, heart or the unredeemable steak when abscess had gone too far.

And the village would be a very happy one. Businesses were roaring, people drunk to their fill all night, they feasted on meat all day, and they entertained visitors too.

I, too, must have got my dose of natural immunity from this concoction. For years later, we could eat from the same pot and a dozen would suffer diarrhoea while I just felt happy the next day asking for seconds. Although I might also trace my perennial dalliance with senakot to the same, I can attest to taking very suspect meals and lived to tell. It is as if my body developed an antigen for every pathogen to be encountered anywhere in the future.

But with a token salvation from the potential poisoning through strict dietary confinements, my systems have gone down. Believe me, when a woman sets about to “correct” your craving for takeaways, you can rest assured that your alimentary system will not escape a good dose of antiseptic to boot.

As I watch in horror six years too short the replay of burning beef and mutton, I raise my eyes heavenwards. God, where have we gone wrong?

His silent answer could be- the price of success is.

Foot-and-mouth does not even kill the infected animal unless from starvation of course. But that could take weeks, not considering that the animals have very soft additives to benefit from. And water is never in shortage unlike elsewhere- where animals have to limp for miles spreading the virus. A weak animal can weather foot-and-mouth for weeks and still suffer the discomforts of morning and evening milking, dipping against ticks, and even foraging in very arid habitats while evading rattlesnakes and lions and rustlers. Sick cows infected with foot-and-mouth are just affected in the mouth and between the hooves. The virus does not survive anywhere else for God’s sake.

The virus, in the history of mankind, has only affected but just one human being. And in that, it was only a minor discomfort. He might not have realised it until he was told about it. I doubt he even sought medication then as he went about his business, unlike today when that is course for quarantine, sick leave, home care, visits by NHS nurses of BUPA sharks, injurylawyers4you, DEFRA, police, army, and Scotland Yard.

As Europe and the US slam their doors on British farm products, the scene can be extrapolated elsewhere- for what is good for the goose should do for the garner.

The Soil Association had bolted the British doors for tropical farm products in the name of carbon miles. Each and every must soon wake up to their effect on the global climate change. The reminder is not as dramatic as the floods in the Midlands and soaring temperatures in Romania. And the unrepentant Asian giants are facing their own deluge as hundred thousands are left homeless and destitute. Far south, the desert advances some three kilometres every year. Forests elsewhere are burning year round.

Supposing, just supposing, instead of burning the ten thousand carcases infested with foot-and-mouth in South East, the good steak was to be saved. Imagine the burning good beef polluting the atmosphere over Wiltshire as Darfur thousands are staring starvation in the face. Says who that we the populace in Bristol care a hoot whether the milk or the beef has potential to have brushed with the foot-and-mouth affected stock, or whether we care for the Brussels’ standards?

The height of hypocrisy is taking up rules that we know in our own hearts that we do not ascribe to. With the wonderful internet and ability to source information, most would by now have known that there would be actually no health danger to one eating a diseased animal. Yet, we are the first to “silently boycott” the local butcheries. We stamp the Brussels bureaucracy by not supporting our own.

Therefore, the extra carbon emitted into the atmosphere is not different from that generated by the air-flight of cut flowers from Nairobi. The beef going to waste in Surrey is no different from that I consumed with relish in Nakuru. The viral strain in Surrey is forty damn years old and isolated- more virulent ones have since ravaged the tropics and they have not stopped locals feasting on animals without let. And believe me, they are much healthier than I am as I peck at silly meals meant to make me healthier by someone who wants to anaesthetise my guts.

What a high price we pay for success- but is it worth it? What success is there if hundreds of thousands of pounds are lost in smoke just to retain a degree of success rated by some trade economists in Brussels? What success is there if our hobbies take higher moral ground than common sense? What mark of success would we aspire just to belong to a “club” that has little regard for nature and a safe future for our children?

May be caveman still has lessons for us…