With the foot and mouth crisis entering its third week there is renewed hope that the worst effects of the agriculture disaster have now subsided.
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Tests on livestock suspected of carrying foot and mouth disease in France, Denmark and Belgium proved negative on Monday, meaning no cases of the disease have yet been confirmed in live animals on continental Europe.
In the UK, 76 cases have been confirmed but there is fresh hope that the outbreak has now been contained. Chief veterinary officer Jim Scudamore said yesterday that the disease is under control, but added: “What we are looking at is disease that moved before 23 February, and then some local spread from some of those. The current status is that we have no unexpected foci of the disease. We don’t seem to be getting an exponential increase. We still seem to be getting a level increase in the number of cases. We are visiting a lot of farms and we are finding disease on them.”
Scudamore said that he expected the number of confirmed cases to drop later in the week though 120 farms are still under investigation from MAFF officials.
Other European countries continue to tighten measures to prevent the spread of the financially devastating disease despite no confirmed outbreaks of the disease in Europe.
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By GlobalDataFrance suspended the transport of all cloven-hoofed animals, except to slaughterhouses, for the next two weeks, while, Italy said it would urge the European Union on Tuesday to close all national borders to imports and exports of livestock susceptible to foot-and-mouth disease.
EU food safety commissioner David Byrne today ruled out a European-wide vaccination programme to prevent the spread of foot-and-mouth. Byrne told BBC Radio that it would be impossible to distinguish between livestock that had been immunised and those that had contracted the disease. The programme would involve vaccinating 300 million animals every six months.
just-food.com published a feature on foot and mouth. To read it, click here.
