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The Health and Social Consequences of the 2001 Foot and Mouth Epidemic in North Cumbria
 
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Front-line workers and occupational distress

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Many co-opted workers were unprepared for the work they found them selves doing. A "field officer" on secondment to MAFF/DEFRA spoke of recurring traumatic images. He speaks of flashbacks and suicidal thoughts:

I’ll never be able to look at a cow or a sheep again without seeing blood pouring out of the hole in its head, […] maybe I will in time…I walked, walking along the pier one night […] I did actually think about jumping in… I felt so bad about myself.
And extreme anger:
I vividly remember, the last farm I was on, […] I was penning up cattle and, I would have been quite happy to have seen (politicians) getting penned up and getting popped in the head […] which I don’t think was a very healthy state of mind to be in, but...that’s how I felt at that time...
.He felt morally compromised:
I resented myself and I resented, the government and the fact that the only way I could comfortably resolve the situation was to er, leave my job I kind of switched off… my reaction was, just thought this is absolute chaos, this is madness
(interview 2002)

A DEFRA field officer describes withdrawing from social contact at home:
I was coming home (very late at night) and I didn’t want to talk to anybody […] I was just ignoring my boyfriend I wouldn’t talk to him. I wouldn’t phone my parents, I wouldn’t phone any of my friends. […] I just wanted nothing to do with anybody.
(Interview 2002)

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