ABSTRACT
The English countryside has never been far from the headlines in recent years. To the casual observer, rural areas and industries seem to lurch from one calamity to the next in a perpetual state of turmoil. A key episode was the Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) crisis which reinforced already widespread perceptions that intensively farmed food could be damaging to health. The identification in 1996 of new variant Creutzfeld Jakobs Disease (CJD) as a fatal human illness sent shock waves through the industry and led to a profound questioning of modern agricultural practices (Hinchcliffe, 2001). This questioning was intensified by the Foot and Mouth crisis of 2001, which turned out to be the most serious outbreak of the disease the world has yet seen. The public bill for Foot and Mouth approached £3 billion and around 6 million animals were slaughtered on 10,000 farms. In addition, a wide range of non-agricultural businesses – from tourism to services – were adversely affected as recreational pursuits in the countryside were halted for several months. The story of the Foot and Mouth crisis is one of the conduct of an agricultural disease leading to a general crisis in the rural economy, prompting demands from rural tourism, recreational and business interests for short-term aid and greater recognition of their significance to the countryside (Bennett et al., 2002).
