Prices fall as farm disease takes hold

Government officials inspect a suspect farm

The full impact of the foot-and-mouth outbreak is beginning to take effect in Wales with livestock prices dropping by as much as 50% at some marts.

One abattoir - the Cig Mon plant at St Asaph, north Wales - has already been forced to close in the wake of Britain's first foot-and-mouth scare in 20 years.

Abattoir workers spray their boots clean

Around 60 workers have been sent home and the company has warned that a long term export ban could jeopardise jobs.

Farmers are still being urged to be vigilant about the signs of the disease.

Fears are continuing to grow that the outbreak is spreading after a new suspected case was reported at a slaughterhouse in Surrey.

As union leaders meet government ministers to discuss the cases identified, the Welsh Assembly's Deputy Minister for Agriculture Delyth Evans, warned farmers to be on the lookout for changes in livestock.

"The next two or three days are going to be crucial because what we must hope is that we are not going to find any further incidences of the disease," she told BBC Wales.

Meanwhile the assembly is being urged to meet as soon as possible to discuss the outbreak.

Experts are still trying to contain and trace the source of the virus, which was first discovered in pigs at an abattoir near Brentwood in Essex on Wednesday - the first case in the UK for 20 years.

Infected farms will have to slaughter livestock

An export ban has been imposed on all meat and livestock and a quarantine zone has been set up around an abattoir in Essex at the centre of the outbreak.

A race against time has begun to trace the source of the outbreak - the first in the UK since the 1980s.

The European Commission has banned all exports of British livestock, meat and dairy products, and a ten-mile exclusion zone has been placed around the Essex abattoir where the highly infectious disease was first detected.

Five farms in the UK have been ringed by five-mile animal movement exclusion areas, in an effort to restrict the disease to the abattoir.

Quarantine

Agriculture Minister Nick Brown has said the government is taking "tough action" to tackle the outbreak quickly and is prepared to compensate farmers for any animals destroyed.

"If necessary, the government will purchase the animals from the farmer, pay 100% compensation and destroy them," he said.

But not everyone is convinced the government is doing enough.

Infected farms will have to slaughter livestock

Shadow Agriculture Minister Tim Yeo said: "I have already talked to farmers who are on the brink of despair because they can see an uncertain future continuing and they don't know for how long and no clear explanation of what the government is prepared to do to keep those businesses in existence."

More than 300 pigs and 60 cattle had been killed at the Cheale Meats site and an adjacent farm owned by the same family.

Four other farms are under quarantine restrictions, including two which sent the infected animals to the abattoir, in Great Horwood, Buckinghamshire and Freshwater Bay, on the Isle of Wight.

Restrictions are also in place on a Yorkshire farm, as one of the infected pigs was delivered from a market in Selby.

Similar outbreaks

A farm near Stroud, Gloucestershire, is also quarantined following another suspected outbreak.

The disease has been identified as "type O" strain, with tests suggesting it is similar to that which caused outbreaks in Japan, Korea, Mongolia and Russia.

Officials said none of the infected animals had been imported into Britain.

But that does not rule out the origins of the infection from illegal foreign meat.

'No threat'

Food Standards Agency said the disease posed no threat to food safety and that the export ban was aimed at stamping it out.

A spokesman said transmission to humans is possible with close physical contact with an infected animal but "extremely rare".

This is the latest blow to Britain's farmers following last year's outbreak of swine fever, which led to the slaughter of 12,000 pigs and a temporary ban on the export of live pigs and pig semen.