All science, law and truth have been chucked out of the window.

Control of the epidemic is now being driven solely by politics and the government spin-machine. And it is interesting that one of Mr Blair's chief collaborators in this has been Prof Anderson himself, whose past record, as is revealed elsewhere in this issue, scarcely inspires total confidence.

As for what this crisis is doing for ministers' own grasp on the truth, a
tiny example was a petulant answer given by agriculture minister Nick Brown when being grilled by the BBC's John Humphrys over how MAFF is now fiddling the figures. Brown was clearly floundering as Humphry's produced one piece of evidence after another to show how MAFF had shamelessly changed the basis on which its figures are calculated, basing this on a newspaper article by an expert
on the crisis, Dr Richard North.

Brown's only response was to launch a personal attack on North for having six years ago organised opposition to the setting up of MAFF's notorious Meat Hygiene Service, as if this alone discredited anything he had to say about foot-and-mouth.

What Brown omitted to mention was that the most conspicuous expression of that opposition to the MHS was a Commons motion signed by more than 100 MPs of all parties. The name at the head of that motion, as Nick Brown well knew, was Tony Blair.