Whenever there is a crisis, someone must be to blame - or so popular opinion goes. However, that person remains unidentified and the condemnation has focused largely on the meat and livestock trades in general - in particularly, with respect to the trade in live sheep. Sheep, which are believed to have been responsible for the spread of FMD in the early stages of this outbreak, are not currently subject to the controls and constraints applied to cattle and, to a less rigorous extent to pigs.
Livestock is a commodity like any other and is, of course, traded as such.
It is the job of the farmer or commodity trader to get the best price they can, when they can and where they can for any animal. That is their profession. They run businesses, not charities. The ultimate purchase of British fat stock is now dominated by a handful of very large companies - the Supermarkets. While these retail companies would like to claim that all the meat they buy is traceable to the farm on which it was raised, in practise variations in supply and demand, which change with locality and season, mean that this ideal cannot nearly meet the demands of the retail trade.