Foot-and-mouth: Where will it end?

Farmers face the prospect of fresh outbreaks

During the UK's last major foot-and-mouth outbreak in 1967, more than 400,000 animals were slaughtered.

A generation later, BBC News Online environment correspondent Alex Kirby finds farmers are again holding their collective breath.

Many farmers find it hard to articulate their horror at the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in the UK.

But while the phrases made familiar by last week's coverage may sound hackneyed, they are heartfelt.

There will be more cases, but the rate at which they appear will give us an idea whether we are getting on top of the outbreak

Tony Little
British Veterinary Association

The outbreak really is farming's nightmare scenario, it does leave those involved feeling they are staring into the abyss.

Farmers are not sentimentalists, but the mass slaughter of their animals before their eyes sickens them.

And perhaps the worst part of the nightmare is not knowing how long it may last.

1967 outbreak

It took the destruction of almost half a million animals to bring the 1967 outbreak under control.

That was confined largely to Shropshire, Staffordshire and Cheshire and to adjoining parts of Wales.

But the present crisis stretches from Northumberland to Devon, from Essex to Anglesey, criss-crossing England and Wales.

Alton, Hampshire, has seen one of the most recent outbreaks

The abyss is potentially far wider and deeper this time, and nobody will predict how many animals may have to die in 2001 before the disease is eradicated.

Most experts agree that the crisis will inevitably worsen still further before there is any hope at all of seeing an end to it, however distant.

Tony Little, a vice-president of the British Veterinary Association, told BBC News Online: "The next couple of weeks will be telling.

"There will be more cases, but the rate at which they appear will give us an idea whether we are getting on top of the outbreak.

Speculation

"We have to take it one step at a time, and it is just not possible to say how far it may go, or how many animals will be slaughtered. That's pure speculation."

Mr Little salutes the government's decision early in the crisis to ban all movement of animals.

"The movement restrictions are absolute, so animals haven't been moving around since the standstill order was imposed," he says.

"So there should be no further spread of infection from one animal to another.

"And that is the main route of infection, although in most recent outbreaks there has been some local infection as well.

Local spread

"The virus is carried by other animals like dogs, it can be carried on vehicles and even by the wind.

"But local spread is usually fairly limited. Putting the standstill order in place early on was a very wise move, because it should stop the disease in its tracks."

There is an argument that animals travel much greater distances today than they did in 1967, and that therefore the potential for the disease to spread far and wide is much greater.

But Tony Little is not convinced.

"Some of the animals from Oswestry market, at the heart of the outbreak 35 years ago, were sent to Banffshire in northern Scotland, and others to Devon," he says.

"There wasn't as much dispersal of livestock then, but there was obviously quite a lot.

Movement restrictions

"The disease didn't move too far from the area round the original outbreak because, again, they imposed movement restrictions very quickly.

"We have to hope those restrictions work this time. I hope it won't involve the slaughter of more than 400,000 animals.

"But it's very difficult to say at this stage. It really is just speculation."

The 1967 crisis began when two pigs were found to be infected on 25 October.

In the first seven days of the epidemic there were 23 outbreaks.

The following week saw a leap to 104, and that rate more than doubled in the next seven days to 222 outbreaks.

Steady increase

Thereafter there was a steady increase until the epidemic peaked towards the end of November, with 490 new outbreaks reported within a week.

After that the disease declined gradually, with the last outbreak occurring in early June 1968.

In many ways UK livestock farming in 2001 is not that different from the way it was in 1967. But there is one interesting difference.

"Farmers don't call us out as much as they did 30 years ago, because they can't afford to," one vet told BBC News Online.

"Last time around, we'd have been visiting farms much more often.

"Many of us earned most of our living from farm work, and just topped up our income with caring for small animals. It's the other way round now."