As Keith from The Office would say: word of advice. grough readers tempted to try walking on water: don't do it!
Defra has just announced a confirmed outbreak of Bacterial Kidney Disease at a Dorset trout farm. And grough reckons that, as walkers are blamed for spreading every imaginable disease about our great outdoors, it's probably wise to desist from exercising your CRoW rights across the surface of the fish farm.
It shouldn't be too long before the tabloids are forecasting the end of humanity because of the latest illness to affect our four-legged/feathered/scaly friends. Whatever did happen to all those flu-ridden swans?
Symptoms of BKD include protruding eyes, a swollen abdomen and pale, anaemic gills. Come to think of it, grough spotted a bloke with exactly those characteristics outside the Old Dungeon Ghyll Hotel just last week.
Defra, which handled the 2001 F&M disease outbreak so admirably, has no plans to close the whole of the English countryside and slaughter millions of healthy animals – yet.
Still, might be wise to give Houghton Springs Farm, Winterbourne Houghton, Blandford Forum a wide berth just in case.
Hans Hoff
26 September 2011Please be advised that Houghton Springs Fish Farm has since passed 4 consecutive 150 fish tests over the prescribed two year period and has been declared free of BKD.
The farm has subsequently become a compartment under EU legislation therefore no longer ‘to be given a wide berth’ as you so lovingly suggest.