The UK has announced further measures in an effort to control the five week-old foot and mouth epidemic in the UK.
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An accelerated cull of healthy animals is set to begin and more central burial sites are expected to be prepared in the coming days in the worst affected areas. New measures will see all livestock – including cattle – within a two-mile radius of an outbreak slaughtered.
The government has set up a high-level crisis management committee that will meet daily to oversee and react to the crisis as quickly as possible. Agriculture minister Nick Brown will chair the Cobra committee, assembled only at times of national emergency.
With the total number of confirmed cases standing at 607 on Monday, agriculture ministry officials in the UK said that new cases now being discovered are well away from previously detected outbreaks raising fears that the disease is firmly out of control. But agriculture minister Nick Brown said reducing the time taken between diagnosis and slaughter was key to controlling the disease.
“By pursuing our dangerous contacts policy we can also have a significant impact on the course the disease will take,” he said.
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By GlobalDataTens of thousands of sheep carcasses will be disposed on Monday in burial trenches at a site in Cumbria. The trenches have been built to help clear the huge backlog of slaughtered animals awaiting disposal.
France announced its second case of foot and mouth on a farm near Paris at the weekend. French agricultural officials fear that the virus could have spread to the region through illegal movement of livestock. The Dutch government also confirmed its fifth case of the disease at the weekend.
