Policy paradoxes from scientific paternalism to agricultural populism in the foot-and-mouth disease in South Korea
Lee Hae Young
Yeungnam University
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South Korean central and local governments decided massive slaughtering and compensation policy against the outbreak of the foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) at Andong region in 2010-2011. Those policy actions, however, featured a policy paradox by state scientific paternalism to framers’ decisions. Even this paternalism itself was justified; the public criticized the extravagant budget expenditures for achieving the goal of FMD free country status. Also environmental, religious, and civic organizations opposed the undiscriminating killings of animals and its underground burying decisions. After all, the Korean government declared the end of the Andong FMD disaster and publicly announced the policy termination of returning to the FMD clean country by ignoring the heavy compensation costs and negative environmental and livestock farming effects. This policy paradox was concreted by the Korean agricultural populist populism, in which it was economically initiated for recovering the devastated livestock farming not by the united and/or organized farmers’ political movement and revolt. This agrarian populism was originally captured by the Korean politician’s compassions to the undergone economic hardship, and by Korean media’s and netizen’s emotional sympathy to the rural farmers. And it paved the middle path or acquittal to the paradoxical scientific intervention. Eventually the slaughtering and compensation policy were getting perplexed and self-contradictory.
Key words: policy paradox, paternalism, scientific paternalism, populism, populist populism, foot-and-mouth disease (FMD)
Introduction
South Korean governments made a paradoxical decision to combat against the foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) devastated to the southern farm villages during the winter season between 2010 and 2011. An autonomous rural city government, Andong had no choice but to kill and bury the infected farm animals undoubtedly including non-infected living fresh livestock. And the farmers just followed this slaughter decision with expecting enough governmental financial compensations even having with some psychological anxieties by livestock market failures. The central government, the Ministry for Food, Agriculture, Forest and Fisheries (MIFAFF) responded to the Andong FMD case that the policy measure was the just slaughtering and burying of infected and non-infected farm animals along with warning a nationwide alert for preventive actions of sanitary cordons across nationally managed loads and highway gates. And in final, the Korean farmers gave up their properties almost entirely with accepting public funds.
Facing agricultural populism for appeasing the angry resentments of the farmers, and pricing the paternalistic intervention to the individual freedom of disposal grounded on the scientific knowledge described in the Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for FMD issued from the MIFAFF for maintaining Al-free nation status in the livestock industry, the Korean governments experienced policy paradoxes from scientific paternalism to agricultural populism.
After implementing the FMD decisions, the governments have been accused of missing the policy timing for disinfection and vaccinations and of slaughtering living livestock for just maintaining the Al-free nation. Polluting underground water by the decayed animals, the policy was charged the costly compensations for appeasing farmers. After all, the same policy action was decided and implemented for the same problem faced with the same public criticisms. South Korean governments have experienced those policy paradoxes in the outbreaks of FMD not only at Andong but also in other regions since the 2000s. Nevertheless, the national and regional FMD policy has been quite simple of slaughtering and burying the infected and non-infected animals in the outbreak regions including the protection zone.
And then, is it imperative and even true in both factually and scientifically that the slaughtering policy was the best and only measure against the FMD? Why the Korean governments adhere to the same policy to those frequent outbreaks of the national problem even faced with far-reaching criticisms of budget extravagance, environmental damage, and massacre of healthy animals? And even it simply admits that the source and the transmission routes of the infection of FMD viruses are uncontrollable to domestic stock farmers, why the slaughtering and compensation policy was justified by scientifically evidenced governmental intervention as much as endorsed agricultural populism?
To answer these research questions experienced at the Andong FMD epidemics, this paper hypothetically issued two theoretical lenses; the science-based state paternalism for intervening to the individual farmers’ decisions for the solution of FMD and the politically appeased agricultural populism as an indulgence to the paternalistic decisions.
With these two research paradigms for analyzing the 2010-2011 Andong FMD case[1], this article reviewed government documents issued from both the Andong City and the MIFAFF and on- and off-lines news media reports and articles about on the FMD outbreak beginning from November 2010 and eventually transmitted to the nationwide by March 2011. Secondly, I personally interviewed with the Andong city and the MIFAFF officials, the president and the general secretary of the Andong Peasants League, Andong City local council members, the damaged rural farmers and owners, the president of the Korean Association of Swine Veterinarians, and the director of Gyeongsangbuk-do Veterinary Service Laboratory, and the head officials in the Animal, Plant and Fisheries Quarantine Inspection Agency.
Outbreak histories of FMD and policy actions
The first outbreak of FMD in the Korean peninsula was recorded in 1911 and sporadically occurred until 1934 with a small scale during the Japanese colonial period. The total numbers of infected cattle were 54,354 including only 12 heads of pig (Ministry for Agriculture and Fishery[2], 2003: 3).
In the 1900s, however, the Korean native cattle had bound for agricultural farming and burdening and an indispensable asset to the Korean farm household. In fact, the small scale of the FMD infection damaged severely to the Korean agricultural industry. In that time, reporting, controlling, and preventive systems to against agricultural diseases were so primitive that there was no public mind against the livestock disease. The domestic animals were only to the private care and breeding. Furthermore, the cattle farmers avoided informing their misfortunes to the public and/or to the government and they did not have any thought and practice to blame the public sector. They only accepted the FMD cases to their miseries.
In addition, the public government had no measures to prevent and/or control the livestock epidemics, and to support financially to the damaged farms. Even the reported statistics was the moiety. The numbers were collected by public officials in and around the most suburban and metropolitan governments. The public government authority and management were limited to rural and remote regions, the so-called farm village, in which almost all the Korean domestic ruminants and pigs had been raised. Also Korean peasants were reluctant to report and/or to participate to the public administration and affairs during the Japanese colonial era, particularly in the bad enough case, such as the livestock disease.
With account of those facts and histories in the Korean livestock farming during the 1900s, the outbreak record itself implied that the Korean livestock farmers suffered their irrecoverable property losses. In particular, the sixty-seven percent of the total infected cattle in the same period had occurred in 1918 (Ministry for Agriculture and Forest, 2003: 3). Even if statistical evidence and/or public documents on governmental compensations did not exist, it can be easily projected that this level of the FMD outbreak devastated Korean rural livestock farming. By the way, after 1934, there were no records on the outbreak of FMD in the Korean peninsula.
After maintaining sixty-six years of no-FMD country, the first major FMD outbreak in Korea was reported in March 2000. The years of 2000 and 2002 FMD epidemics, however, were limited to fifteen and sixteen cases respectively, and controlled within a month, in which Korea recovered its free country from the Office of International des Epizooties(OIE), World Organization for Animal Health in November 2002 (Korea Rural Economic Institute, 2011: x).
The policy against to the 2000 and the 2002 FMD incidences was bounded to the slaughtering and burying the infected and healthy animals over 160 thousand heads. At the outbreak of 2002 case, firstly the pig was infected, in which the victimized species accounted for the 99.1% of total slaughtered livestock (Ministry for Agriculture and Forest, 2003: 43). This FMD incident trend has continued to the latest 2010-2011 Andong FMD case; over the ninety percent of the infected and slaughtered animals belonged to pigs (Table 1).
After eight years of Al-free nation status, the second major disaster of FMD was occurred in 2010; the outbreak was developed in January and continued to April throughout in the seventeen cases which were regionally limited in Gyeonggi-do and its vicinity (suburban Seoul) (Gyeonggi-do, 2011: 11). Over 55,000 infected and live animals were slaughtered and 77,400 million Korean won (US$64.5 million) disbursed for the financial compensations to the Gyeonggi-do farmers. After paying these expensive costs, the Korean livestock industry regained the FMD free country in September 2010.
Quite shortly after this expeditious management, the calamitous outburst of FMD in the Korean agricultural history turned out in November 2010 at Andong, the southeast region of Korea. The Andong FMD began on the 28th of November 2010 and prolonged to the 24th of March 2011, in which the FMD virus was transmitted to the entire regions of the Korean peninsula, except Jeju Island and Jeolla-do, the southwestern region. The infected livestock animals covered all species including Koran native cattle, beef and dairy cattle, cow, pig, goat, and even domestic deer. The table 1 showed the Andong FMD disaster.
Table 1. Numbers of Infected Farms, Slaughtered Animals, and Underground Buried Sites, and Compensation Expenditure by Region in 2010-2011, the Andong FMD Case
Region / farms* / animals (in head) / buried site / compensations(US$, millions)
cattle** / Pig / others*** / Sum
Gyeonggi-do (Incheon) / 2,503 / 72,962 / 1,711,060 / 51,079 / 1,835,101 / 2,266 / 690.6
Gangwon-do / 661 / 19,941 / 399,167 / 782 / 419,890 / 470 / 189.3
Chungcheong-do / 851 / 8,936 / 784,732 / 1,428 / 795,096 / 637 / 238.7
Jeolla-do / 2 / none / 12,531 / none / 12,531 / 2 / 6.4
Gyeongsang-
Do / 2,251 / 52,901 / 429,016 / 3,620 / 485,537 / 1,208 / 312.8
Total / 6,268 / 154,740 / 3,336,506 / 56,909 / 3,548,155 / 4,583 / 1437.7
*The numbers of farms (in household) are included farming reported infected FMD virus animals, preventive slaughtering alive animals, and FMD epidemic-related.
**dairy cattle are included.
***goats and domestic deer are included.
Source: the unpublished statistics was provided by the Division of General Animal Health, the Ministry for Food, Agriculture, Forest and Fisheries in March, 2012.
First of all, the sheer number of slaughtered animals itself verified that the Andong FMD case as an apocalypse; over 3.5 million heads of livestock were infected and slaughtered, in which the cruel victim fell under 3.3 million pigs. And over six thousand farms in household reported their livestock infected FMD as well as their property losses. Even the traditionally safe species of goat, deer, sheep, and dog were also infected to the FMD virus. The massacred animals were buried in 4,583 underground sites scattered in the Korean rural area. The Korean government paid 1.7 trillion won (US$ 1437.7 million) to livestock farmers for just compensations to the slaughtered animals. The devastated statistics also revealed that the slaughtered animals in the Andong FMD case amount to 23.2% of all Korean livestock farming in 2010. Specifically, 33.8% of pigs and 4.6% of cattle were victimized (Ministry for Food, Agriculture, Forest and Fisheries, 2011: 126).
Secondly, even the Andong area, the epicenter of the 2010-2011 FMD took the criticisms on the transmission of the epidemic virus to the nationwide, the Gyeonggi-do and its vicinity, the outside Seoul was hit again by the Andong FMD. As FMD outbreaks of the 2000, 2002, and 2010 years were mostly limited to the Gyeonggi-do region (Ministry for Agriculture and Forest, 2003: 43; 62; 109), the 2010-2011 FMD virus also attacked intensively to this area as evidenced in the table 1; over the half of the total slaughtered animals (51.7%) and in particular, about ninety percent of goats, deer, and sheep (89.8%) appertained to the suburban Seoul region; and the half of the compensations money (48.0%) was distributed to this area. This statistics depicted the totally destroyed pig farming in the Gyeonggi-do area, in which 92.4% of all raised pigs were slaughtered in this region compared to 15.9% of cattle.
As deservingly, the Andong region was ruined by the FMD virus; 100.0% of all the breeding pigs and 68.7% of cattle were slaughtered; 57.8% of the farming household was damaged (Andong City Government, 2010; 2011: 9); and slightly over the half (51.0%) of total compensations for the loss of the livestock disbursed to the Gyeongsang-do[3] was allocated to the Andong’s livestock farmers. By following the FMD manuals described in the OIE and the emergency SOPs prescribed by the MIFAFF to against the Andong FMD case, the Korean governments paid the costs of total 1.7 trillion won for the compensation allowance only (table 2).
Table 2. Korean Government Budget Spending to the 2010-2011, the Andong FMD case by Paid Items
Items / budget spending(Korean won, US$)
nation
(millions) / Andong City
(millions)
slaughtering area
(infected zone) / compensation allowance / 1,725,272
(1437.7) / 191,256
(159.4)
living stability fund / 20,260
(16.9) / 5,373
(4.8)
livestock repurchasing fund / 4,480
(3.7) / 20,955
(17.5)
migration limited area (protection zone) / livestock farming stability fund / 4,574
(3.8) / 12,887
(10.7)
buying fund for living animals / 142,983
(119.2) / 2,859
(2.4)
Total / 1,897,569
(1,581.3) / 233,330
(194.4)
Sources: the nationwide unpublished statistics were provided by the General Animal Health Division, the Ministry for Food, Agriculture, Forest and Fisheries in March, 2012. And the Andong City's unpublished statistics was provided by the Division of Livestock Management, Gyeongsangbuk-do in March, 2012.
The 9.1% of the total budget expenditure allocated to the government’s buying the living animals for the preventive measures against FMD virus infections, paying the living costs, and livestock farming stability and repurchasing to individual farmers in both slaughtering and migration limited, i.e. protection zone. And the Andong local government also complied with this expenditure system; 82.0% of total budgets compensations were paid for the loss of livestock disclosed in the table 2.