Britain reeling from fresh foot and mouth outbreak
Pastor Dale Morgan
Britain reeling from fresh foot and mouth outbreak*
By Prashant Rao
September 15, 2007 10:17am
Article from: Agence France-Presse
BRITAIN will today continue slaughtering animals near the site of a new
outbreak of foot and mouth disease, just days after officials declared
they had stopped its spread and lifted restrictions.
The new case was discovered close to a farm south of London where an
outbreak was first reported last month.
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) was quick
to impose a new England-wide ban on the movement of cattle, sheep, pigs
and other ruminants.
The European Union also reimposed a ban on British meat exports to the
bloc's 26 member states, the European Commission said.
Britain's red meat export market is worth about STG500 million ($A1.2
billion) a year, mostly with the EU. Britain was the ninth largest beef
exporter last year among the 27-member European Union.
Cattle were ordered slaughtered on the affected farm, near Egham, west
of London. Egham is 21km from the village of Normandy, where foot and
mouth disease was confirmed on August 3.
A 3km protection zone was thrown around the farm holdings, with a wider
10km surveillance zone imposed on the farm.
Animals on the farm next to that site were to be slaughtered because
they were suspected of having been infected, Defra said in a statement
late yesterday.
"This is a precautionary measure and was identified by Animal Health
during surveillance this afternoon," it said.
After chairing a meeting of COBRA, Britain's top-level cell to cope with
national crises, Prime Minister Gordon Brown vowed that his government
would do everything to stamp out the disease and find its "root cause".
An official investigation last week concluded that the earlier outbreak
was probably caused by leaking drains, flooding and vehicles moving from
nearby animal vaccine laboratories without pinpointing the exact source.
The laboratories are at Pirbright, 16km from Egham.
A leading scientist, Professor Hugh Pennington, said the latest outbreak
is highly likely to be a resurgence of the strain which hit farmers last
month.
Pennington, an emeritus professor of bacteriology at Aberdeen
University, northern Scotland, said the disease could survive for as
long as two months in cool, damp conditions, which the area has been
enjoying in recent weeks.
Britain's Chief Vet Debby Reynolds said the authorities were vigilant
after she confirmed the new case of foot-and-mouth disease.
"There are other reported cases being investigated, including one in
Norfolk in some pigs, where foot and mouth disease can't be ruled out,"
Reynolds told BBC television earlier.
She added in a statement: "This is a developing situation. Our objective
is to contain and eradicate the disease."
"As with the outbreak last month, we will be seeking to take a staged
and risk-based approach to controls."
Anthony Gibson, a spokesman for the National Farmers' Union, said:
"We're going to be reliving the nightmare."
The outbreaks raised the spectre of a repeat of a 2001 crisis, in which
up to 10 million animals were culled and which cost the national economy
about STG8 billion ($A19.3 billion).