Farmers’ group pursuing authorities for 2001 animal cull

KOOTWIJKERBROEK – A local interest group, called the Stichting Onderzoek MKZ Crisis Kootwijkerbroek (translated in English Foundation for the Investigation into the MKZ Crisis Kootwijkerbroek) is making progress in its efforts to turn over every stone in the highly controversial preventive culling of over 60,000 animals, kept in a certain radius around a farming operation, and suspected of having been infected by the hoof-and-mouth disease in 2001. The farmers never accepted the verdict by the authorities that the disease had spread to the Teunissen farm, simply because the alleged outbreak never spread beyond the suspected veal calf operation. In every other outbreak location in 2001, other surrounding farms were infected with animals showing evidence of the infection. The group’s focus has been on the quality of the laboratory work, which they suspect was compromised somewhere in the process. The authorities maintain that this could never have happened. Released documents have recently raised even more questions the group wants answered.