UK Foot and mouth Disease 'may have spread further'*

By Gordon Rayner, Chief Reporter
Last Updated: 1:48am BST 14/09/2007

Farmers are facing the prospect that foot and mouth could already have
spread across the south of England after it emerged that the latest
outbreak started at the site of an agricultural show.

During the August bank holiday more than 5,000 people visited the Egham
Royal Show, which was held on the field where foot and mouth was found
in cattle on Wednesday.

If, as is suspected, the virus was already present in the field at the
time of the show, it could have been transferred to other sites on muddy
car tyres.

Pigs slaughtered due to foot and mouth outbreak
Slaughtered pigs are cleared away at Stroude Farm near Egham

On Thursday, as 800 pigs and 40 cattle on an adjacent farm were culled
as a precaution, the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural
Affairs (Defra) confirmed that the new outbreak in Egham, Surrey, was
the same strain of foot and mouth virus as last month's infection 10
miles away, which was blamed on a leak from a Government laboratory in
Pirbright.

It means the two outbreaks are almost certainly directly linked.

One possibility is that the virus, which can survive for up to six
months in the open, was transferred to Egham during the agricultural
show, where animals were banned but some vehicles were allowed onto the
land. It could then have been picked up on other vehicles and
transferred elsewhere.

Shadow environment secretary Peter Ainsworth warned that the current
crisis has the potential to hit farmers even harder than the disastrous
2001 outbreak because it has come at the "worst possible" time of year.

The nationwide ban on livestock movements means sheep farmers, who often
earn their entire annual income in September, cannot sell their lambs
for slaughter or replenish breeding stock ready for next year, while
upland farmers cannot drive their herds to low-lying areas where they
can be sold for fattening.

"Depending on how long the current crisis lasts, the economic impact on
the farming industry could be worse than in 2001 because of the timing,"
said Mr Ainsworth.

"This is a critical time of year for livestock movement and the economic
cost of this outbreak could spiral out of control."

In 2001 seven millions animals were slaughtered as foot and mouth spread
across the country, costing the farming industry £8.5billion.