Godstone Farm E-Coli Outbreak.

Godstone Farm is an open farm and children's activity centre in Godstone, Surrey. On August 8th 2009 a child who had been in contact with animals at the farm came down with Escherichia Coli 0157 (E-Coli), a particularly nasty bacterial infection the symptoms of which include vomiting, diarrhoea, kidney failure and death. Despite the relevant government agency being informed at the time no action was taken and the outbreak was allowed to peak yesterday (9/16) with 40 cases including 14 children who are seriously ill in hospital. Although E-Coli occurs naturally in farm animals it has been suggested the strain in the Godstone Farm outbreak was brought in from an outside source making the incident an example of bio-terrorism.

While Godstone farm is not technically within the London Borough of Croydon it is about 30 minutes drive from the town centre. As such it is a popular destination for Croydon school trips and for Croydon parents to take their children too during the long summer holiday. I personally can remember visiting the farm on a number of occasions and started hearing rumours that children who'd visited the farm were getting sick in the first week of September before the story got picked up by local, low-level news media the following week (9/7 onwards).

The Health Protection Agency's failure to take action to control the outbreak stems from a belief by the British Security Service that the American intelligence services are spying on a British spy network that is operating in Croydon. Although in espionage circles this is pretty much normal behaviour, even amongst allies, on this occasion the Brits have gone and got all upset. In response they decided to launch what a hacker would probably call a back trace in order to find out what, if any, information the Americans have gathered and how they went about doing it. The operation was planned to take place in the week of the September 11th anniversary because the Brits knew that event would leave the Americans mournful, distracted and therefore susceptible to attack.

At around dawn (local time) the Brits snapped and closed down Godstone Farm breaking the story internationally. This allowed journalists to talk to the families of those infected and changed the dynamic of the discussion into one of whether the farm (Croydon) has any future or whether it will have to be shutdown and all the animals destroyed. Personally I've been asking that question for years but the local authority seem unable to give the correct answer.