朱伟老师题源报刊精读课第七课.pdf

第13篇-农业类 （选自《经济学人》2007年8 月）——P30 Gordon Brown has not been short of crises since becoming prime minister, with everything from incompetent terrorist plots to record-breaking floods to contend with. Themost recent began onAugust 3rd,when cows at a farm near Guildford,in southern England, tested positive for foot-and-mouth disease, a contagious and debilitating sicknessthatmainly affectscloven-hooved animals. Britons, an urban people, do not as a rule know much about the ailments of livestock, but foot-and-mouth is an exception. The previous outbreak, in 2001, was disastrous. Government inaction allowed the disease to spread so far that, when steps were at last taken to halt it, large swathes of the country had to be closed off. The sheer quantity of animal corpses, slaughtered to halt the spread of the disease, meant that the army had to help with their disposal atop vast, smoking pyres. The total cost, including compensation, was eventually put at around £8billion ($16.2billion, at today’s exchange rates). This time things look very different.As The Economist went to press, the infection seemed confined to two farms in Surrey, with a third being tested. The confusion that helped the 2001 crisis to spiral out of control was absent. The Department for Environment, Food and RuralAffairs (successor to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries andFood,which, alongwith the cows,did not survive theprevious outbreak) quarantined the farms immediately. Sick animals were culled, livestock movements were banned (though later relaxed) and exports halted. Mr Brown cut short his holiday to convene the government’s snazzily-named COBRA emergency committee. Even the European Union praisedthe government’spromptness. Theworkinghypothesis isthat thevirusescaped from anearbybiological laboratory, where it is used in research and in the manufacture of vaccines. The strain found in the Surrey cowsisanunusual one,andmatchesexactly avariantused