First They Came For The Cows
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As the smell of burnt cow meat once again wafts across the southern English countryside, the stench is not only casting a pallor across the faces of Surrey farmers, but also threatening to expose the sordid relationship between the UK government, US big business and the little-known world of “bio-terrorism”.
A second herd of cattle, less than two miles from where a first infected group was found last Friday, tested positive for the foot and mouth disease (FMD) frustrating British farmers eager for a quick end to the crisis and to avoid a repeat of the massive slaughter and burning of millions of animals that occurred in 2001.
It has now been established that the outbreak was caused by a strain of the virus which only exists in a government laboratory located three miles away from the first reported case. This particular strain does not occur naturally outside the government-owned “Institute for Animal Health” at Pirbright. The Pirbright facility is shared with a private American pharmaceutical company, Merial Animal Health, which manufactures vaccines for animal diseases such as FMD. The strain has now been conclusively linked to a vaccine that Merial manufactured on 16 July this year.
Unsurprisingly, the UK government’s spin doctors are already on the job, with news reports carrying the government Health and Safety Executive suggestions that contaminated water at the Merial laboratory may have been disposed of improperly and the recent flooding in the UK may possibly have carried the disease to surrounding farmland, or perhaps the air-filtration system at the lab was not powerful enough to prevent the virus from escaping.
What is most interesting about this outbreak of FMD is that it comes hot on the heels of yet another appearance of the terrifying “bird fluâ€, with 2 swans in France, a few ducks in Germany and 51 chickens in India all succumbing to the disease. Call me conspiratorial if you like, but I’ve been watching the modus operandi of the powers that be for too long now to take anything of this nature at face value, at least not before I subject it to the smell test. So let me share some finer details with you and you can then decide for yourself.
First, a quick look at Merial:
Merial is a world-leading animal health company. It is a joint venture between Merck & Co. and Sanofi-Aventis, founded in 1997. Merial produces pharmaceutical products and vaccines for livestock, pets and wildlife. Merial employs approximately 5,000 people and operates in more than 150 countries worldwide. Its 2005 sales were in excess of $1.9 billion.
Judy C Lewent (Judy Lewent, Executive Vice President of Merial) is responsible for worldwide financial, corporate development and licensing matters, as well as for strategic planning at Merck. Judy is also responsible for the Johnson & Johnson Merck Consumer Pharmaceuticals and Merial (Merck and Sanofi-Aventis) joint venture relationships and the Merck ongoing relationships with Astra and DuPont.
Judy is a member of the Board of Directors of Dell Inc., Motorola, the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a trustee of the Rockefeller Family Trust; a life member of the MIT Corporation; and a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.
Interesting company Ms Lewent keeps. It is also interesting that on July 31st 2007, just a few days before the outbreak of FMD that has been linked to Merial, Ms. Lewent off-loaded 50,000 shares in Merial. Then yesterday, one day before it was revealed that the strain of FMD had come from Merial’s lab in Surry, she dumped a further 63,000 shares of common stock. Oh yes, and she is retiring next week. Now, I can’t say for sure yet, but I assume that the news of Merial’s involvement in spreading FMD is not going to do their stock price any good. So, can we say “insider trading�
On the one hand it could be suggested that both Meril and the UK government have much to gain from another FMD epidemic across the UK and that they may well have conspired to deliberately release the disease. Meril would stand to receive large sums of money from the sale of millions of doses of the vaccine for FMD that it makes if, and the UK government would be provided with another opportunity to run hundreds more small and medium-sized farms out of business and further centralise one of the most important food-producing industries in the UK.
Up until now, the vast majority of farmers in the UK were against the vaccination solution to FMD for a variety of reasons including:
It is difficult to correctly distinguish between the variations of the disease, (especially with government and big business tinkering incessantly with the strains) for example the strain discovered recently in Surrey is different from the form that swept across Britain six years ago
A vaccinated animal cannot be moved for a time because it can still be a carrier of the infection.
Each new generation of animal must be vaccinated
Many farmers, struggling to survive because of government agricultural policies, would be unable to afford the relevant vaccine, but most importantly of all, British beef and milk would have to be labeled as “vaccinated” which would make it more difficult to sell, at least abroad.
With this latest outbreak however, The National Farmers Union, fearful of having to watch another 6 million cattle go up in smoke, are saying that there is perhaps some merit in the vaccination idea, and Merial would of course be very happy about that.
As for the Gordon Brown government, it seems that they are doing everything in their power to help the virus spread far and wide. The owner of the land where the outbreak was first detected yesterday attacked the government for failing to shut footpaths in affected areas and criticised the decision to transport slaughtered infected cattle 80 miles for incineration as “absolutely stupid” and “madness” because it risked spreading the disease beyond the infected farm.
David Denny, a veterinary surgeon from Worcester, said the policy of moving the carcasses across country was a “risk too far”. “I’m horrified, it is all because the public must not be seen to witness funeral pyres again. Foot and mouth must be treated as a disease and not subjected to political spin.”
Apparently some people are still unaware of the fact that everything the UK government does is “spinâ€, which is just a ubiquitous euphemism for “liesâ€.
There also exists the possibility that UK government would be happy to see another FMD epidemic and UK farmers forced to accept the vaccination of all British cattle, because in this way they could ‘vaccinate on the fly’ those members of the Great British public who eat beef and drink milk – which is most of them. Why not? It’s a brave new world folks, and if the American government can ensure that one of the ingredients in diet soft drinks is the same as the main ingredient in rat poison, then why not a little dead mutated FMD vaccine in your McDonald’s burger and milkshake, eh? After all, FMD only “very rarely†affects humans, then again, according to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs the latest outbreak of FMD was a “01 BFS67-like virusâ€, i.e. it was a version of FMD that is not normally found in animals and linked instead to the vaccine that Merial produced by mutating the original 1967 FMD virus, so eh….just shut up and eat your big mac.
Having said all that, it does seem a little unrealistic to think that if Merial were part of some conspiracy to infect British cows with FMD, they would have had the gumption to cover their tracks a little better than choosing their own back yard to release a mutated strain of the virus. So maybe Merial wasn’t part of this particular conspiracy, but was instead something of a fall guy, a useful idiot, or rather Merial’s shareholders were the useful idiots, while the management like Ms Lewent mentioned above, were smart enough to get a tip of in advance and dump their shares. In this case then, and assuming that someone did deliberately release the mutated FMD strain/vaccine, who dun it?
For the possible answer to that one, we need to look to those stalwart defenders of British society against the Islamic terror hoard from the East – the MOD.
Back in 2002, one year after the first FMD pandemic, a public inquiry into the outbreak revealed evidence that a phial containing the foot-and-mouth virus went missing from the Porton Down research laboratories.
Professor Michael Dower, leading the inquiry, said he was still waiting to hear from the government regarding the matter. He wrote to rural affairs minister Lord Whitty on January 8 with a list of questions which had arisen from information the inquiry had received locally.
Professor Dower asked: “What forewarning did the Ministry of Agriculture (Maff) have of a possible foot-and-mouth outbreak prior to the outbreak in February?
“Several of the written submissions the inquiry received refer to reports of a lost phial of foot-and-mouth virus from Porton Down,” he said.
Apparently the good professor never heard back from the Blair government. Yeah, shocking, I know.
The mention of the MOD’s secretive Porton Down biological and chemical research laboratories in connection with the release of FMD is ominous indeed and brings us straight into the murky world of alleged “terrorist†attempts to acquire biological and chemical weapons for use against innocent Western civilians and the MOD and American government’s supposed efforts to thwart such attempts.
The name of the research facility at Porton Down has undergone many changes over the years, the words “chemical” and “defence” have been consistently used, giving the impression that…well….that it is used only for research into “defence” against “chemical” weapons. In 1991, however, the UK “Centre for Applied Microbiology and Research” moved to the Porton Down facility and its name was changed to the “Chemical and Biological Defence Establishment”, reflecting the addition of biological warfare agent research to the list of “services” that Porton Down offered.
Despite the name change, it is reasonable to assume that, in the current climate of prolific fear mongering over the illusory threat from “Islamic terrorists†a significant portion of the Porton Down facility is dedicated to the much more sinister art of chemical and biological offence. After all, research into defending against a biological or chemical attack requires a knowledge of the agents involved that is equal to if not greater than that of the attacker.
Furthermore, it was at Porton down in the 1950’s that at least one unwitting British army serviceman was subjected to chemical agent (Sarin) tests that caused his death, and at least one scientist at the facility who died in 1962 of the plague. This more sinister side to life at Porton Down came to light in 1999 and later in 2001 when an independent medical probe was launched into claims that not only Maddison, but 20,000 other “volunteers” were duped into participating in dangerous tests at Porton Down which resulted in serious side effects and death for many.
Monday, 30 July, 2001
The government is launching an independent medical investigation into the health of 20,000 volunteers involved in biological and chemical weapons trials at its Porton Down defence establishment.
Many volunteers exposed to nerve gas and other chemical and biological agents at the laboratories on Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire say the tests left them with long-term ill health.
There is compelling evidence that some were given highly dangerous doses.
And some say they were tricked into participating in the tests by being told they would be researching the common cold.The two-year scientific study will examine the death rates of all volunteers at the chemical and biological warfare research centre since 1939.
And there will be more detailed scrutiny of those exposed to the most dangerous substances.Several Cornish servicemen were exposed to the deadly nerve gas sarin during experiments between the 1950s and 1980s.
And Wiltshire police investigating their claims have found an unusually high death rate among the volunteers.
The MoD’s chemical and biological weapons research centre has tested 3,000 service personnel in human volunteer experiments since 1945.
More than 300 ex-servicemen claim to have suffered disabilities ranging from breathing difficulties to kidney complaints as a result of tests carried out at the centre run by the Defence Evaluation and Research Agency (Dera).
The Co-ordinator of the Porton Veterans’ Support Group, Ken Earl, said he was “absolutely delighted” by the news of the inquiry.
He told the BBC’s Today programme: “There are a lot of very sick people out there and a lot of widows.
“And we are convinced that we are sick because of those experiments we took part in.”
The Junior Defence Minister, Dr Lewis Moonie, agreed the tests had been “potentially dangerous” but added that they had been necessary to show what effects nerve gas and nitrogen mustard gas would have on people and whether they could be protected against it. […]
It was revealed earlier this year that a coroner had applied to hold a fresh inquest into the death of an airman who took part in one of the experiments.
It is claimed that 20-year-old Mr Maddison died 45 minutes after 200mg of the deadly nerve agent sarin was dripped onto a patch of uniform taped to his arm at Porton Down.
Ronald Maddison, murdered by the MOD The original inquest into his death was held 48 years ago behind closed doors, where a coroner concluded he died of asphyxia.
The coroner’s report was never released and the only relative allowed into the inquest was the airman’s father, who was sworn to silence under the Official Secrets Act.
It appears that at the time of his death, Maddison’s father was told “it’s an official secret that we murdered your son, so shut up”. Without doubt this attitude from the UK authorities towards a UK citizen is extremely disconcerting. We might tend to think that such a stark infringement of basic human rights would not occur today, if it were not for the equally alarming comments of the UK Junior Defence Minister, Dr. Lewis Moonie, who states:
“The tests had been necessary to show what effects nerve gas and nitrogen mustard gas would have on people and whether they could be protected against it.”
If a relative or son of the Junior defence minister had been the subject of the tests, we wonder if he would still be so cavalier about the use of live human subjects for chemical and biological testing.
BBC News
August 20, 1999A sinister air surrounds the subject of chemical weapons, quite different from the power politics of the nuclear arms race.
And some of the mystery is attached to the name of Porton Down, the secret chemical weapons centre in Wiltshire.
The centre, made up of forbiding buildings in 7,000 acres near Salisbury, was set up in 1916 at the height of WWl.
Patrick Mercer, a retired army officer, spent several weeks there on courses designed to tell soldiers about chemical warfare.
“It was hideous,” he said, “a hutted camp, where it seemed to do nothing but rain. There were a series of bunkers to which you were thrust from time to time to be gassed with CS gas and to go through ghastly exercises underground wearing a gas mask.”
During WWII Porton Down started researching a new menace – biological weapons, but during the Cold War chemical weapons became the top priority.
For many years, the mere fact that there was a chemical weapon research centre there was secret, but after it was admitted in the late 1960s, it became the most controversial military establishment in the UK.
To test the effectiveness of nerve agents such as Sarin, servicemen were offered about £2 and a pass for three days’ precious leave if they voluteered to take part in tests.
Rob Evans, a journalist researching a book into the experiments, said the main reason people volunteered was because they were bored with life at their own military establishments.
“They wanted to get away for any type of break, just anything. As soon as something came up. . .they would step forward, say yes, I’ll take that.
“But sadly very few actually knew what Porton Down was, or what they were letting themselves in for.”Allegations
Wiltshire detectives are investigating allegations that in 1953 one serviceman, Ronald Maddison, died after taking part in a Sarin gas experiment. It is claimed that he thought he was taking part in a programme designed to find a cure for the common cold.
But the Maddison death was not the only thing to go wrong at the centre.
Rob Evans said: “The two most embarrassing accidents, and they are more tragic than embarrassing, were the death of Ronald Maddison and also the death of one of their own scientists Geoffrey Bacon in 1962, who died of plague.”
Since the end of WWI, 20,000 people have taken part in experiments at Porton Down, and it is thought that there are a further 300 servicemen waiting to begin legal actions against the Ministry of Defence.
The probe into Maddison’s death, and the illegal testing of chemical agents on many others was launched in 2001 – but something else of note happened that same year – the “Chemical and Biological Defence Establishment” at Porton Down changed its name to “The Defence Science and Technology Laboratory” – a thinly-veiled attempt to divert attention from the secretive research that is very likely ongoing behind locked doors somewhere in the bowels of the facility formerly know as Porton Down.
Getting back to Merial.
In 2000, Merial forged a marketing alliance with Agrivet Farm Care, part of British multinational Glaxo Smith Kline India. A Glaxo press release said that Agrivet Farm Care will have access to the entire Merial range of products.
Also in 2000 Glaxo Wellcome-SmithKline merged with Beecham to create the world’s largest drug company
In layman’s terms, Merial is a big multinational pharmaceutical company that makes vaccines against animal diseases. One of their biggest markets is poultry vaccines, specifically, vaccines against the H5NI strain of bird flu – in birds that is. As with many vaccines, the virus itself is manipulated in some way to make the bird-life-saving vaccine against the virus.
Glaxo – Smith Kline is a big multi-national pharmaceutical company that makes vaccines against human diseases, or “drugs for humans” if you like. One of Glaxo Smith Kline’s most important products is a vaccine against the H5NI strain of bird flu – in humans that is.
Coincidentally enough, today the US Department of Health and Human Services ordered 22.5 million more doses of the avian flu vaccine from the international pharmaceutical giant Glaxo Smith Kline.
Of course, we shouldn’t forget that in December 2003 Allen Roses, worldwide vice-president of genetics at GlaxoSmithKline stated publicly that fewer than half of Glaxo’s drugs have any beneficial effect at all in combating the health problems/diseases for which they have been prescribed/manufactured. Pretty depressing huh? Never mind, take a Paxil and you’ll feel much better, maybe.
So the executive VP of Merial hangs out with the Rockefellers, who just happen to have a history of research into eugenics and “population reduction†and mapping the human genome (which opens the door to ethnically specific bioweapons) and micro chipping the entire global population if possible, and the non-executive Chairman of Glaxo-Smith Kline, Sir Christopher Hogg, just happens also to be the non-executive Chairman of Reuters, one of the largest media organisations in the world, and both companies are involved in manipulating deadly strains of viruses allegedly to produce vaccines for animals and humans against those same deadly viruses. Specifically, Merial was involved in mutating a decades-old FMD strain in search of a vaccine but somehow managed to create a mutated strain that got released into the wild, probably by the MOD in order to condition the population to outbreaks of deadly biological agents.
And now, bird flu is back, and there is all of this evidence that the US military has been doing it’s own research into resurrecting and mutating deadly forms of the flu virus from yester-year (with extremely lax security measures), despite the fact that it has been proven that in the case of the “Spanish flu†outbreak of 1918, it was the vaccine that caused the virus to mutate which transformed the original virus, within the human host, into a deadly strain:
Vaccine not virus responsible for Spanish flu
Ryle Dwyer writes on the horror of the 1918-20 pandemic which the propaganda says was caused by Spanish flu
Irish Examiner, May 1 2003How did they know it was the virus of Spanish flu that killed millions of civilians and soldiers? This disaster occurred when viruses were unknown to medical science. It took a British science team to identify the first virus in man in 1933.
As regards the origin of the outbreak, he relates that a senior US army officer suggested that the Germans might have been responsible for the bug as part of their war effort, by spreading it in theatres or where large numbers of people assembled.
Did they also spread it among their own people, killing 400,000 as reported? Ryle would have us believe that all those American soldiers who died from non-combatant causes may have died from Spanish flu.
But US Army records show that seven men dropped dead after being vaccinated.
A report from US Secretary of War Henry L Stimson not only verified these deaths but also stated that there had been 63 deaths and 28,585 cases of hepatitis as a direct result of yellow fever vaccination during only six months of the war.
And to top it all off, a US pharmaceutical company recently created, and the MOD covertly released, a new mutated form of FMD in the UK which mutated because they were searching for a “vaccineâ€, and “flu season†is just around the corner.
My advice: if there is a flu, or some other viral pandemic this winter, don’t take any government-administered vaccines. You probably won’t live to regret it.
Really well put together.
A fascinating read.
Thank you.