Four new cases of foot and mouth disease have been found in the UK, bringing the total number of confirmed cases to 16.
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The new cases have been found in Anglesey, County Durham, Lancashire and Northampton, said the government’s chief veterinary officer Jim Scudamore.
The emergence of more outbreaks of foot and mouth disease comes as the UK Prime Minister Tony Blair holds a full ministerial crisis meeting today to discuss the outbreak. The meeting will look at a range of measures to curb any further spread of the disease as well as discussing compensation for farmers whose livestock has been slaughtered and incinerated.
Ministers may consider banning the public from some rural areas including invoking rarely-used powers to shut public footpaths near farms. Agricultural official are concerned that the crisis is attracting people to farm areas ignoring repeated appeals to stay away.
“I am looking very hard indeed as to whether we should take statutory powers to close down public footpaths where they run near livestock holdings,” said agricultural minister Nick Brown.
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By GlobalDataMajor sporting events may also be affected by the crisis with race meetings, rugby and football fixtures under threat.
The European Union’s chief vets are meeting today to discuss the spiralling foot-and-mouth crisis with fears that the disease may now have spread into Europe. Maff has conceded that a farm that has the disease exported livestock to mainland Europe before the crisis emerged. The vets are likely to extend a ban on livestock, meat and dairy exports to the community.
The head of the European Union’s meat trading association, Jean-Luc Meriaux, said any transmission of foot and mouth to mainland Europe would be “an absolute disaster” for the European meat business, far worse even than mad cow disease.
Today just-food.com published a feature on foot and mouth. To read it, click here.
