Jew World Order

Since 2010 the town hall has worked hard to help farmers’ wives develop a
lucrative sideline in farm stays where city families can enjoy life on a
real working farm.

Becoming ground zero in an international disease outbreak has put all this in
doubt. At the same time the livelihood of farmers who have lost lambs has
been threatened.

By no means every farm has been hit, but there have been casualties, with
affected farms losing as many as one in four of their new-born lambs and in
some cases even 50 per cent.

“Some farms have been devastated,” Mr Halbe said.

For individual farmers, the experience of finding new-born lambs dead in the
straw, with deformed bodies and misshapen heads, has been harrowing.
Reinhard Linsmann, a sheep farmer aged 44 from Balve, has lost 25 lambs
because of the virus.

“It is a tragedy for any farmer to lose livestock, but its even more of a
tragedy when you feel like there is nothing you can do,” he said. “How
can you get rid of all the midges?

“The new lambing season will be on us soon. We can only pray that the we
don’t see a new wave of cases then.”

George Risse, 40, from the town of Warstein, lost 16 new lambs to the virus.

“I was in tears when I went into the lambs’ stalls on New Year’s Day and
found the young ones dead or dying,” he said.

“You know, you do everything right, you do everything you are supposed to
do and there is a certain pride and expectation and joy knowing that the new
lambs will be coming.

“And then you see these creatures like something out of a horror film. It just
breaks your heart. It made me fearful of breeding them again in case it
comes back.”

The loss is enough to threaten his farm, with its flock of 500 sheep, which he
has spent 25 years building up. Some lambs survived birth but have deformed
bones and joints, which vets put down to the virus.

Mr Risse said he and farmers like him feel they are suffering in isolation.
There have been no visits from EU officials, no advice on what to do and no
offers of compensation.

Instead, there is now a palpable sense of fear among his neighbours that more
deaths will be inevitable when the new lambing season begins in a few weeks
time.

The greatest fear for the farmers is how their cows will fare. Far fewer
calves than lambs have died so far from the virus, but a cow’s pregnancy
lasts longer at nine months.

So only in April and May will they find out if calves were infected in the
womb last summer. If many were, the crisis could prove far more devastating
for Germany’s prosperous farming sector.

Although plenty of farmers are prepared to talk openly about the virus, nobody
will say exactly where in Schmallenberg it was first detected. The mayor
said he did not know which farm was the first.

It could have been any one of dozens of dairy and sheep farms and hundreds of
smallholdings dotted across the landscape around the town’s handsome black
and white half-timbered buildings.

The mayor proudly pointed out that his town was founded in 1244. “Not
much has happened since then,” he said with a wry grin. “Until now.”

Discovery of the virus was a trauma for the close-knit rural communities
around Schmallenberg, which is an hour and half’s drive east of Cologne on a
fast autobahn and then a winding road through deep forest.

There was snow last week on higher ground. Most families have someone who
depends on farming for a living, and everybody knows their enviable
prosperity – the unemployment rate, at three per cent, is one of the lowest
in Europe – depends on agriculture and tourism, both of which rely on public
confidence.

“It was November 22,” Mr Halbe said, referring to the date when the
disease was named after the town. The first cases were found in August. As
the scientists examined the corpse of the first dead lamb, the initial worry
was that the disease could infect humans, through contact with farm animals
or eating them.

To everyone’s relief, that was deemed unlikely, although health agencies in
Germany are still carefully monitoring farmers and vets who come into
contact with infected herds.

The disease seems to move between species. Goats have been affected, and even
bison. Scientists think adult cows have suffered fever and a drastic
reduction in milk production, although so far none seem to have died from
it.

Although Germany’s farming communities are worried, so far everything about
the crisis has been Germanic and orderly. Beef and lamb sales have been
happily unaffected, there are no restrictions on movement or sale of
livestock – which would be pointless because the virus is thought to be
spread between animals by midges – no slaughter, and no panic measures.

“This is not BSE,” the mayor said, emphatically. For a few anxious
weeks though German farmers were desperately worried that it was a repeat of
that disaster, which brought many to the brink of bankruptcy a decade ago.

In reality Schmallenberg is no longer the most significant hot spot for the
disease, which has spread rapidly across Germany and into Holland and
Belgium. The mayor called up a page on the computer of his office to show
the disease’s march across Germany. Red spots crowded across the north and
west of the huge country.

Exactly where the disease came from is a mystery to farmers, although some
have speculated that it may be from Africa because it resembles a similar
disease called Blue Tongue that arrived a few years ago.

“We are so globalised these days and diseases travel more. It is quite
possible that it has been here for a while, perhaps even for years,”
said Josef Schreiber, 50, head of the farmers union in Westphalia.

He thinks lamb stillbirths from the virus may not have been noticed until
their numbers rose dramatically this winter.

His greatest worry is that consumers will err on the side of caution and stop
buying beef and lamb, raising the prospect of serious damage to the market
and farmer’s livelihoods.

His own farm of 150 dairy cattle has not been affected. But German farmers
like him know that this is a new disease, in Europe at least, and like all
new diseases it may be in a fluid state, constantly adapting and perhaps
about to transform into something more much dangerous.

Mr Schreiber takes encouragement from statistics showing that adult animals
survive the virus, and can go on to bear healthy offspring even if they have
suffered stillbirths.

Farmers who have carefully watched the progress of the virus believe that over
time animals immunize themselves and the virus causes less mortality.

“Researchers are working hard to find out about it and to develop a
vaccine,” he said, a prospect which is still probably 18 months away.

To help them, German farmers are expected to notify research laboratories when
a lamb or calf is dead or deformed, although there is no legal requirement
to do so.

“The financial damage to farmers generally hasn’t been that great, so far
at least,” he said.

A minority have been hit hard. As scientists work to research the virus,
farmers are trying out their own cures.

Some have poured repellent on to sheep to keep the midges off, and even fed
them with garlic because eating it is believed to keep insects at bay.

Germany’s farmers are hoping the disease will blow over in time. The damage to
the sensitive tourist industry, especially in Schmallenberg, may be harder
to mend.

Nowhere do Germans hope more fervently that the virus will fade away and
quickly be forgotten. Then Schmallenberg can have its name back.

Additional reporting Allan Hall in Berlin