Britain hopes to contain F&M

2007-08-06 09:11

London - The return of foot-and-mouth disease to Britain has reawakened all-too-fresh memories of culled cattle burning in massive pyres.

Within 24 hours, veterinary experts matched the strain to one used by a laboratory near the affected farm to produce vaccine against the disease. The discovery raised hopes the latest outbreak was an isolated case and the British countryside had escaped the worst.

Biosafety experts scoured the high-security animal laboratory on Sunday to determine how the strain of the virus may have escaped from a facility dedicated to eliminating the devastating animal disease.

Officials' growing suspicion that the lab - home to a government research centre and a company that makes foot-and-mouth vaccine - was the source of the outbreak on a nearby farm raised hopes the disease would be stopped before it spread.

The officials in charge of the lab denied on Sunday that there had been any lapses in biosecurity procedures.

Focus on lab facility

However, Prime Minister Gordon Brown - who chaired five meetings of the government's emergency committee since the outbreak was announced on Friday - said the focus was on the lab facility. He said he was hopeful that a potentially disastrous livestock epidemic could be averted.

The agriculture department said the strain of foot-and-mouth disease found on the farm was identical to one used at the laboratory six kilometres away, which is shared by the government's Institute for Animal Health and a private pharmaceutical company, Merial Animal Health.

Saying the particular strain of the disease had not recently been seen in live animals, it ordered a 10km protection zone set up around the lab and the affected farm. The department also began an urgent review of biosecurity measures at the lab.

"The first thing, having identified a possible source of the disease, we must now look at the transmission mechanism," Brown said.

While the government has not ruled out other sources for the virus, "we are looking intensively at what's happened on this site", Brown added, saying officials are tightening biosecurity measures in the immediate area. "We hope by doing that, we will be able to control and contain (it)."

Cattle slaughtered

Cattle on a farm outside Wanborough, 50km southwest of London, tested positive for the disease, which affects cloven-hoofed animals including cows, sheep, pigs and goats. It does not affect humans.

About 120 cows from the farm were slaughtered on Saturday, as well as animals owned by the same farmer at two additional fields nearby, officials said.

Farmer Derrick Pride said he had done all he could since reporting the infection.

"It is nothing to do with us. It is not our fault. It is something beyond our control," Pride said, speaking from his farm in Elstead, England.

The highly infectious disease, which devastated Britain's rural economy in 2001, when carcasses of the seven million culled cattle were burned in pyres that dotted the countryside, can be transmitted though contact between animals, or by wind.

- AP