Britain's foot-and-mouth spreading even faster

Britain's foot-and-mouth spreading even faster
Reuters

London, Mar 28: Prime Minister Tony Blair will insist on Wednesday that Britain is open as usual for tourism and other business despite a record jump in the number of infected sites in the country's foot-and-mouth epidemic.

Tuesday's 59 new cases were by far the biggest number in a single day since the epidemic began just over five weeks ago, piling pressure on Blair as he battles to show he has the leadership skills to steer Britain through the crisis.

The scale of the problem was underlined by a BBC report that British soldiers will be used for the first time to help slaughter a backlog of more than 270,000 infected or suspect animals. A total of 423,000 have already been killed.

The highly infectious disease has established footholds in the Netherlands, France and Ireland, but the size of the disaster in Britain -- where there are now 694 cases - has Blair on a political tightrope.

He must decide at the weekend whether he risks a voter backlash if he presses ahead with plans for an early general election on May 3.

Blair, who has adopted a higher profile in the fight against the financially ruinous livestock disease, will use a speech to the British chambers of commerce on Wednesday to tell tourists that Britain remains a green and pleasant land to visit.

Tourism has been hard hit by television pictures flashed around the world showing "keep out" notices plastered across large swathes of rural Britain and giant pyres burning day and night to dispose of tens of thousands of animals slaughtered because of foot-and-mouth.

Tourism chiefs have been warning him that the industry is losing 100 million pounds ($143.8 million) a week and that this could rise to 250 million in the normally lucrative summer months that are now just weeks away.

"People should go to the countryside but stay away from farmland," Blair will say in his speech, according to the Independent newspaper.

"It is tragic that tourism in areas totally unaffected by foot-and-mouth are every bit as affected as those that have."

The BBC said seven British Army butchers would help in the cull of animals in the northwest English region of Cumbria -- one of the worst-hit areas from the disease which afflicts livestock such as pigs, sheep and cattle by causing severe weight loss.

Until now the Army has been involved in providing logistics and organisation for the mass culls across Britain.

The Army butchers would use bolt guns which slam a metal rod into the back of an animal's head and knock it dead, the BBC said.

"Experts agree that the current outbreak is unprecedented internationally," Agriculture Minister Nick Brown told parliament on Tuesday, adding that the epidemic had yet to reach its peak.

He proposed a ban on the use of swill feeding of pigs in Britain, a possible cause of the epidemic.

Brown said the Labour government was also considering whether to use vaccination in the fight to eradicate foot-and-mouth -- something it had previously shied away from because it can lead to the loss of "disease free" status in export markets.

The minister said the disease may have been introduced into Britain through illegal commercial or personal imports of meat, but he did not say where the smuggled meat might have come from.

Industry experts said Britain had long been a number one destination for dodgy meat traders hoping to sell cheap meat smuggled from countries where foot-and-mouth was endemic.

Ireland said on Tuesday it had postponed its national population census, scheduled for the end of April 2001, because of fears that officials roaming around the countryside could spread foot-and-mouth.

US state governments added restrictions on imports of livestock and farm equipment from Europe amid concerns the US Agriculture Department (USDA) had not done enough to keep out foot-and-mouth.

The Uited States temporarily banned imports of livestock and fresh meat from the entire European Union on March 13. The ban was to expire on Wednesday, but the discovery of additional cases in the EU have prompted USDA officials to leave the ban open-ended.

Officials have said an outbreak in the United States, free of foot-and-mouth since the 1920s, could cause billions of dollars worth of losses to farmers.

North Dakota's Agriculture Commissioner Roger Johnson said he was deeply concerned the USDA may lift its ban on EU meat products prematurely. "When dealing with foot-and-mouth disease, it is far better to err on the side of safety," he said.