Twelfth foot-and-mouth case

Ministry of Agriculture workers build a fire for pig carcasses

Saturday 24th February 2001

The foot-and-mouth crisis seems to be spreading despite efforts to contain it.

The Agriculture Secretary, Nick Brown, today confirmed that twelve separate cases had now been found.

However, addressing MPs in the House of Commons, he stressed that the Government remained determined to contain and eradicate the disease.

This seems an increasingly difficult task. Earlier in the day it emerged that as many as 25,000 sheep, cattle and pigs are believed to have passed through three markets at the centre of the foot-and-mouth outbreak in the week before the ban on moving livestock.

Chief vet, Jim Scudamore, said investigators were tracing the movement of all animals, vehicles and people out of the markets at Hexham, Longtown, near Carlisle and Northampton after diseased animals were believed to have passed through all three.

This afternoon, Ben Gill, PResident of the National Farmers Union was at Downing Street to discuss the crisis with the Prime Minister.

He said Tony Blair promised to provide whatever was needed to halt the disease.

All movements of farm animals are banned, nature reserves have been closed, and animals in infected farms are being slaughtered and burned.

On the continent, too, restrictions on livestock markets have been introduced in Belgium and the Netherlands, and vehicles arriving from Britain are being disinfected.

In one part of Germany, stock imported from the UK has been destroyed.