Foot And Mouth Disease Back In Britain
Foot and Mouth disease has been detected in animals at a farm in Britain, setting the stage for a repeat of the national disaster that engulfed Britain in 2001. In the last outbreak, more than six million animals were slaughtered and the total cost to the nation reached some £8 billion. Prime minister Gordon Brown has reacted quickly and banned all movement of animals in Britain. The EU has already acted to ban all British meat imports to the continent.
The nightmare of foot and mouth is back in the British countryside.
Cattle from a farm near Guildford, Surrey, tested positive for the disease, which cost the country £8billion when it last hit in 2001.
The EU has now banned livestock imports from Britain and Gordon Brown has broken off from the first night of his summer holiday in Dorset to chair a meeting of the Government's emergency planning committee, Cobra.
Environment Secretary Hilary Benn, on holiday in Italy, has also returned to deal with the crisis.
Protection and surveillance zones have been established and all movement of cattle and pigs in the UK has been banned.
All animals on the affected farm will be slaughtered.
The outbreak presents Mr Brown with another major challenge. He has already had to deal with attempted terrorist attacks and devastating flooding since becoming Prime Minister.
The 2001 foot and mouth outbreak led to the slaughter of more than six million animals amid furious criticism that emergency plans were woefully inadequate and ministers and officials missed chances to contain the crisis.
Farmers went out of business and tourism was devastated as huge areas of the countryside were closed off.
More about Foot and Mouth disease (FMD) here (I always heard it called Hoof and Mouth disease years back). It is not clear at this point how this outbreak spread to the farm animals, but I imagine that there will be a lot of effort spent on trying to figure that out. FMD can spread in deer, rats and even hedgehogs, so it may be difficult to pin down. But I have certainly posted a lot about the rat population explosion in Britain in the past few months. I wouldn't be surprised to find there is some connection.
World news | Gaius Saturday, 4 August , 2007
By feeblemind, Saturday, 4 August , 2007 @ 7:49 am
Seems like it used to be known as Hoof and Mouth. I have seen debate over which is correct. Since a hoof is a foot, I think we are simply splitting hairs and it doesn’t really matter. We all know what is being referred to. A great concern of mine is that terrorists will collect a little dirt infected with Hoof and Mouth virus and sprinkle it around some of the major sale barns in the fall of the year when large numbers of cattle are changing hands. In a few weeks they could have half the nation’s cattle herd infected. It is not as glamorous as blowing up the WTC, but they could do far more damage going after our food supply.