Return to purdeyenvironment home page last revised 9/7/02

Correspondence Page

1. This is the letter written to Ruth Thompson, DEFRA by Allen and Overy - solicitors for Mark asking for DEFRA to make a statement to correct the inaccuracies made over Mark's research position and his grant proposal as set out in the Horne committee report.
2. E mail exchange with Mundi club
3. Letter to Farmers Weekly

2.The Mundi club: The Mundi club site on Geo cities published a long piece on Mark's work over the years. As is common with these kind of pieces both the reportage and analytic grasp of what actually occured is very poor.The scientific revue was of no merit. Having taken part in much of the story myself its always interesting to read of things that are supposed to have been done and said and weren't. That aside, there was also some political thesis advanced that is supposed to underpin what I had always thought was a simple quest for the truth. I can't remember what it was - far centre conspiricy- I think, but it did give us a laugh. Here is a recent e mail exchange .

Subj:The(Vegan Eco...
Date:09/06/02 08:40:09 GMT Daylight Time
From: veganau
To: NRJPURDEY@aol.com cc: MadCowPurdey@aol.com

Hi Mark, I'm wondering why all those associated with
WestonAPrice and that other jerk Pottenger all seem to
suffer from vCJD 'brain dead' every article you morons
write that bag vegetarianism or veganism have no
substance, nothing is documented in any medical
journal! Anyone who promotes raw milk, raw meat has to
be a first class jerk. I suspect you pommes suffer
from MadCows. I mean your surrounded by the diseased
intensive factory farmed non-human beings. Supporters
of the Meat and Live Slaughter, Menstrual Effluent
Board and the White Stuff.
Get areal life.
The animals don't need your excuses GO VEGAN

Mark's reply
Subj: Re: The(Vegan Eco....
Date: 09/06/02 10:48:22 GMT Daylight Time
From: MadCowPurdey
To: veganau

Hi Anonymous,

What are you going to achieve by hiding yourself behind a brick wall of anonymous rant; delivering angry outbursts of irrational, generalised assumptions at someone who you do not even know ? Get your bloody facts straight mate.

Your wild ironic accusations are totally misappropriated in this instance, I can assure you. Approach Weston A Price et al over your concerns over "raw meat" fetishes - I do not know what you are on about. I just write the occassional article for their journal .

You do not realise that I have fought for the best interests of animal welfare over the years, to the extent that I have been alienated from the entire conventional farming community here in the UK - I just differ from you in that I feel domestic animals perform a crucial role in maintaining soil fertility; their manure supplying humus for balanced soil microbiology and nutrient status. Without this, wind and rain erosion would deplete topsoils sufficiently to famine the world. No amount of theorizing over the adequacy of green manures in maintaining humus will dissuade me from my 30 years of PRACTICAL agricultural experience. If you want scientific references , then I could send you hundreds - or simply look up my academic publication list in the scientific literature. 

Your style of approach can only create great gulfs of conflict in the world. We need  growth and understanding in these disintegrating times, not further angry anonymous souls orbiting around igniting off cluster bombs of  irrational outburst.

I have spent my adult life pitted face to face ( NB, not anonymously ) against the might of multinational and government dirty tricks in order to expose the eco-toxicology of products that prop up the global economy . It is a lonesome life, believe you me, and I did not see you by my side in Australia two weeks ago when I was single handedly risking my physical wellbeing - yet again - by taking on the mega mining corporation which control Groote island, and  pointing out to their manager how their mining activities have crippled an entire Aboriginal village with a fatal psycho-neurological TSE disorder ( scapegoated onto Aboriginal genetics ) as well as seeding the madcow madness ( with their manganese dioxide animal mineral product ) across the entire world . Your ironic nationalistic comments about  vCJD being a pommy problem, when you are obviously too blind to suss out that it originated from your back door.

No I do not need to get any more real than I already am, you anonymous whimp.

Mark Purdey

Subj: Re: The(Vegan Eco....
Date: 13/06/02 11:37:51 GMT Daylight Time
From: veganau
To: MadCowPurdey@aol.com
Sent from the Internet (Details)

Not Sure why you think I sent this anon, my emails
supposed to show Paul Stokes maybe I did not sign off.
As for visiting Australia. What a shame that you came
25,000 miles and you never got to meet 'the grass
roots ngo groups'- who brought you?? Whoever organised
your stay could have a least contacted us there are
numerous sites internationally we are on
active.org.au, geneEthics.network
As for my "ravings and rantings" I got this feeling
looking at you site and you still say domestics
animals have a crucial role blah de blah. non-human
species are not on this planet for you farmers! After
they have served your purpose they are off to the
slaughter houses, don't give me that crap that you
have a use for their shit! What you going the grow
grains for to feed to the animalk whose hard hoofs
destroy the top soil.Oh I forgot you have designed
some rubber wellie for the cows and sheep!
Its not the facts you need in fancy words it the hard
facts you need even if its a bit stronger than your
pommie tea!
The animals don't need your excuses Go Vegan!

Subj: Re: The(Vegan Eco....
Date: 23/06/02
To: veganau

wow, your Emails get increasingly aberrant !!!

What do you mean by;  "Who brought me to Australia ? " Some of us on this planet still have enough integrity and inner security left to think and decide for ourselves as "individuals", and therefore do not need to get addicted to the dogmas of the Mundi club, ngo groups, vegan groups or the likes of the Weston A  Price Foundation et al .

It was actually an Aboriginal family who saw a documentary about my work on your Four Corners ABC tele slot. They then suggested that I came over to investigate their disease which I did - entirely on my own initiative. This family are not on the internet so they had not been aware of your organisation. Anyway, as I fund myself , I do not have the resources to travel to meet all of these grass roots ngo groups to which you refer.

You then commit that same old "livestock versus vegetable" cliche where you condemn livestock because they allegedly erode the soil via their hooves !!  Your statement is totally misguided and devoid of any practical insight into the biomechanics of ecosystems. You are seriously deluding yourself.

Witness; the sudden onset of topsoil erosion once the likes of Delmonte and other corporations started to plough up the light loam African plains where the herds of Massai cattle - along with wild hoofed animals - once roamed. Whilst zero soil erosion occurred when the land was traditionally pastured, twenty years of continuous cash cropping with pineapples, vegetables, sorghum, etc, caused almost total loss of soil humus within that small amount of time - to the extent that the corporations found it no longer able to sustain an economically  viable yield of crop despite their massive chemical fertiliser inputs. Soils without humus will not grow crops. fullstop. final.

Another example of the value of cow manure as a soil humus builder involves the switch from the customary returning of cow dung to the land in India to the customary burning of cowdung as fuel. This switch over initiated an unprecedented increase in soil erosion by wind and rain, to the extent that the cause of the problem was picked up on and they duly reverted to their policy of returning dung to the land. I could cite thousands of examples of erosion from around the world, due to cessation of returning dung back to the soil. 

Wind and rain erosion of soils occurs once humus is depleted and the soil microlife/earthworms, etc have been annihilated - by the likes of chemical soil acaricides such as carbaryl which are employed in monocropping systems. Also the machinery tracking and compacting endured in arable / vegetable farming systems causes serious gulley erosion of topsoils. I have never seen any erosion resulting from livestock hooves. To the contrary, each hoofprint serves to puddle the rainfall, thereby PREVENTING erosion as opposed to the ever increasing snowball effect due to the amassing of rainfall flowing along the tractor tracks in gulley erosion.

I expect that you will now wheel out that age old cliche of permaculture. Whilst you or I may have the initiative and motivation to permaculture sufficient food from our back gardens, it is totally unpractical and unworkable to envision this system on a grand global scale. As reality stands, we have the population masses living in large towns who are dependent upon cheap food and materialistic indulgences. There would be a revolution if any government tried to force them to start permaculturing their own food .It just would not work. Thus, the present consumer society has found its own unhappy medium and lead to the evolution of a farming system that is seriously adrift - monocropping arable / vegetable desertscapes and grotesque, factory-farmed domestic animal systems from hell. I am trying to evolve a mixed sustainable system of farming which respects ecology, animal and human welfare, as well as serving as an economically VIABLE and PRACTICAL alternative to the current mono systems.   

Whilst I stand with you against the extreme cruelity of intensive factory farming, I do feel that animals have to be involved in a mixed, balanced farming system intended to feed the world - but farmed in a welfare-friendly way !!

I hope you will just step outside your dogma for a while to consider this viable option for a future of life on earth, and not a life without any earth.

Best,

Mark Purdey.

3. Recent letter to Farmers weekly.

7/6/02
Letters to the Editor,                                                            High Barn Farm,
Farmers Weekly,                                                                 Elworthy,
Sutton,                                                                                Taunton,
Surrey.                                             
                                                                                                    
Dear Sir,

Lord Walsingham's letter highlights  the correct aetiological needle in the causal haystack of BSE origins, but that is only half the battle won when considering the additional task of getting DEFRA to accept the validity of these findings.

For years now, the  MAFF/ DEFRA scientific group has been busy consuming public  funds to deliberately discredit and suppress any emerging research findings which dissent from their own scrapie hypothesis on the origins of TSE.

My own request for personal data ( via the Data Protection act ) revealed that MAFF officials and the British Agrochemical Association had jointly designed a public funded research project that was deliberately tailored to discredit my phosmet-BSE theory. The Public should only be expected to fund impartial scientific investigations that further the best interests of human and environmental wellbeing, and  NOT  to fund the commercial interests of  the Agrochemical industry.

My data request also revealed how Michael Meacher's own officials were doing their utmost to sabotage their Minister's repeated requests to meet with me to discuss the OP-BSE theory. They succeeded.

In order to appease mounting public interest in the publication / broadcasting of  my self funded research findings, Baroness Hayman made a seemingly authentic invite for me to submit a proposal to DEFRA for funding my research.    

After sitting on my proposal for over a year, DEFRA outright rejected the proposal as soon as the publicity had waned. Their rebuff was based on a raft of totally irrational, unscientific and irrelevant reviewer comments. One reviewer had misread my proposal claiming that I was only going to take one sample of soil per spongiform cluster area , when in reality, I had proposed twenty. Despite pointing this major error out to DEFRA staff, I was amazed to see that they had pumped his inept critique up as the key basis of their rejection.

To my disgust, my data protection requests revealed that DEFRA had subsequently rewarded this reviewer by inviting him onto their leading TSE steering committee. I also gleened how another reviewer had plagerised the contents of my original research protocols, then subsequently submitted "his" proposal into DEFRA and got the funding !! 

Until the "experts" dispel their mindset myth on the meat and bone origins of  TSEs and accept a causal role of metals and oxidative stress , then BSE will continue to make surprise attacks in countries like Israel, Finland, Japan where no plausible meat and bone origin can be identified. 

Sincerely,      
Mark Purdey.