In 2001 the infectious animal disease foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) was diagnosed at a company in Kootwijkerbroek on the basis of a positive test. In order to prevent spread, the decision was made to kill the animals on the farm in question and in the environment.
Memories of culls
Several Kootwijker brothers, farmers and sympathizers did not believe the test results and that led to blockages and riots in 2001. The mobile unit was used to protect teams that had to clear the tens of thousands of animals at the 246 farms.
Text continues below the photo.
“All kinds of memories come back,” said cattle farmer Gert-Jan Dokter during the last court hearing last year when his thoughts go back to 2001. “The first rumors that samples were taken. That there has been positive testing. That a company had to be cleared. But no one animal got sick in Kootwijkerbroek. ”
Doctor and other livestock farmers did not accept the culls on the farms. For the past 18 years, a legal battle has been waged against the government to challenge the decision.
Experts and ‘wrong’ tests
For years it has been a struggle to make documents, test results and laboratory procedures public. Subsequently, the test results were examined and how the procedures were followed in the research laboratory designated for that purpose.
Nieke Hoitink spoke on Radio Gelderland with Lau Jansen of the Stichting MKZ-Crisis Research Kootwijkerbroek about the case:
According to the Ministry of Agriculture Nature and Food Safety (LNV) there is sufficient evidence that the result was positive and that intervention was therefore inevitable to prevent the animal disease from spreading.
Text continues below the photo.
The farmers try to prove that the tests are incorrect and the procedures in the laboratory have not been followed correctly. The judge also had various experts from the Netherlands and abroad look at the file. Three experts presented their report in 2019 expressing their doubts.
Also read: Breakthrough for farmers in foot and mouth disease no longer to be traced
The Trade and Industry Appeals Tribunal (CBb), the highest economic court in the Netherlands, will make its final decision this morning. Then after 18 years it becomes clear whether in 2001 the government was right to take the decision to kill 60,000 animals.
– .
