Likely source of FMD found

Vets arrive at the farm in Heddon on the Wall

Friday 23rd February 2001

The foot-and-mouth crisis is becoming more serious.

Tonight, the picture is of an increasing number of cases, more restrictions, and as of five o'clock all livestock movements in Britain are banned for a period of at least one week.

From five p.m. on Friday, it is a criminal offence to transport livestock animals within Britain unless special permission is granted.

Several five-mile animal exclusion zones are already in place after the discovery of confirmed cases in Essex and Northumberland.

Avoid countryside

Anyone who does not have urgent business in the countryside this weekend has been asked to avoid moving around in the countryside for fear of spreading the disease. Ramblers and hunters in particular have been urged to avoid farms.

Source found

One glimmer of good news is that officials believe they've identified the source of the outbreak - at Heddon-on-the-Wall in Northumberland at a farm where pigs are held before going to the abattoir.

Disease spreads rapidly and easily

Pigs at the farm were found to have suffered from the disease some time ago. Vets believe the initial infection would have occurred at least 14 days ago, which raises fears that the disease might already have had ample opportunity to spread.

It is thought that the 200 or so pigs on the farm will be slaughtered and burned this weekend.

The areas affected so far are Essex, where there are four confirmed cases of foot-and-mouth, and Northumberland - where a second case was identified today.

Fears of origin abroad

Even yesterday the Agriculture Minister, Nick Brown, speculated openly about the origin of the outbreak. He said it could well have come from illegally imported food.

Certainly a question mark hangs over Britain's effectiveness at stopping food that hasn't come through the proper channels.

In Australia for example there are much tighter rules governing what can and can't get in and they're strictly enforced.

Carson Creigh from the country's Quarantine and Inspection Service told PM how Australia remains free from virtually every plant and animal disease in existence by having some of the most stringent import rules in the world.

Brown rebuts Tory criticism

A passenger information card requires people entering Australia to declare whether they have with them foodstuffs of any kind, any straw and raffia work items, dairy products, seeds or nuts and whether they have been on a farm in past few weeks.

Carson Creigh's opposite number in this country is Sandra Westacott whose job is to check imports at Southampton, Britain's second biggest container port.

She told us that although she has the power to check animal origin foodstuffs coming into the European Union, there are not sufficient resources to check all imports.

Government cracks down

Nick Brown, the Agriculture Minister, told PM that foot-and-mouth could have a devastating impact on the farming industry and must be eradicated.

He defended his decision to ban the movement of livestock for a week, saying that it was absolutely necessary.

His behaviour is grotesquely irresponsible and I strongly condemn it

Nick Brown on Tim Yeo

In response to criticisms by the Conservative Agriculture Spokesman Tim Yeo that the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food had not acted quickly enough, Mr Brown accused him of using the crisis as a party political issue.

Mr Brown said on PM "Yeo is an unpleasant irritant in all of this - I wish he would just shut up and go away".

Tory response

In response, Tim Yeo insisted that there were real questions to be asked of the government's handling of the crisis and that he was determined to ask them on behalf of farmers.

He said that Nick Brown would do better to concentrate on sorting out the problem at hand than attacking the Conservatives on their BSE record.