Europe's media tracks foot-and-mouth scare

Grazing safely - but for how long?

Newspapers in Europe have continued to follow the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in Britain and the risk of its reaching the European mainland.

Concern was high in Germany, where a minister in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia warned that the country was "on the brink of a catastrophe" after sheep were found with antibodies to the disease.

For the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, the outbreak - coming hot on the heels of the BSE crisis - was an argument against intensive farming methods.

"Anyone who still has a trace of respect for God's creatures cannot close his eyes to the sacrilege" of TV footage from Britain showing "the summary disposal of animal carcasses in mass graves, smoking pyres and eerily-clad culling crews," the daily said.

"Farm policies that produce such scenes at ever shorter intervals are in dire need of change."

Missing the point?

But this view was not shared by a columnist writing in the Berlin daily Der Tagesspiegel.

Calls for a switch away from factory farming, which have been at the heart of Germany's BSE debate, miss the point where foot-and-mouth is concerned, according to Alexander Kekule.

Unlike with BSE, it is not 'British conditions' that are responsible for the foot-and-mouth outbreak, and neither is factory farming to blame this time

Alexander Kekule, in Der Tagesspiegel, Berlin

Mr Kekule, who heads the medical microbiology institute at Halle-Wittenberg University, said animals were more susceptible to foot-and-mouth in the open than segregated indoors, because it was easier to pass it on.

"Moreover, the despised industrial fodder used by conventional stockbreeders has at least the advantage that it is guaranteed to be free from the foot-and-mouth virus," he said.

Not Britain's fault?

"Unlike with BSE, it is not 'British conditions' that are responsible for the foot-and-mouth outbreak, and neither is factory farming to blame this time," he concluded.

His view was shared by France's Liberation daily.

"Nobody is trying to blame on British farmers the resurgence of a disease which had disappeared from Britain for over 20 years," it said.

The whole of Europe is paying for Britain's excessive confidence and finds itself contaminated by another livestock health crisis

El Mundo, Madrid

"This could have happened in any country."

Spain's El Mundo was less forgiving.

"The fact that the source of mad cow disease was in Britain, just like foot-and-mouth disease now, raises serious doubts about British checks on livestock," it said, noting that Britain had abandoned routine immunization long before the rest of the EU.

"Now the whole of Europe is paying for Britain's excessive confidence and finds itself contaminated by another livestock health crisis," it concluded.

In Switzerland, the Tribune de Geneve saw the highly contagious virus as a blow to globalisation.

Here we go again?

"Through the double shock of the mad cow and foot-and-mouth diseases, the EU countries are trying to close in on themselves in an unachievable food autarchy which we thought had been left behind by the free movement of goods and market liberalisation all around the world," it said.

'Paralysed'

Back in Germany, exporters in North Rhine-Westphalia - where the suspect sheep were destroyed this week - are living in fear, according to a local newspaper.

The Koelnische Rundschau described the regional meat industry as "paralysed like a rabbit by a snake".

One industry chief interviewed for the article said an "uncontrolled epidemic" would be "a catastrophe", while another was even more pessimistic, warning that just a single confirmed case in the region would be enough to "practically kill off" its meat-export trade.

BBC Monitoring, based in Caversham in southern England, selects and translates information from radio, television, press, news agencies and the Internet from 150 countries in more than 70 languages.