Vaccination deadline looms

Vaccination is seen as another way of containing the spread

Downing Street says it has less than 48 hours to decide whether to use vaccines to control the spread of the foot-and-mouth.

European vets gave their permission for a policy of vaccination on Wednesday, but the government said the measures would only be used in the disease hotspot of Cumbria.

Crisis in the UK

38 new cases on Thursday

Total confirmed cases 780

788,956 animals due for slaughter

496,821 already slaughtered

349,379 carcasses destroyed

Thirty-eight new cases of foot-and-mouth confirmed on Thursday brings the disease total to 780, with Tory peer Lord Clinton's Devon farm one of the latest to be affected.

Conservative leader, William Hague, has urged the prime minister to rule out a 3 May general election, because the crisis is still "out of control".

Tony Blair has appeared on American television in an effort to persuade US tourists that Britain is still "open for business".

In an interview with NBC's News of America, Mr Blair said: "Any tourist attraction, virtually, that anyone in the United States will have heard of and wants to come and see, is open.

"Britain is open for business, you can go to any town, city and village that you want."

Policy 'correct'

Army butchers are being used for the first time to help slaughter a backlog of more than 280,000 animals, as killing continues at a massive burial site in Great Orton, Cumbria.

The Environment Agency has confirmed it is investigating a "pollution incident" in a river close to a site in Wales being used to store carcasses of the mass cull of 40,000 sheep on Anglesey.

Early indications are that a tributary of the Afon Cefni has been contaminated by body fluids seeping from the Mona airfield site where sheep carcasses have been deposited.

Once the animal has been vaccinated it will have to be killed

NFU president Ben Gill

Earlier, National Farmers' Union President Ben Gill stressed that both the government and the industry was doing all it could to stop foot-and-mouth and "get rid of it from Britain".

He said that the policy of slaughtering infected animals within 24 hours followed by the cull of animals on neighbouring farms within a further 48 hours was still the correct one.

He warned that a vaccination programme would never be 100% effective and was not a solution in itself.

He said: "I'm not talking about blanket vaccination even within Cumbria. I'm talking about targeted vaccination.

Click here to see 1967 foot-and-mouth figures compared to 2001 figures.

"Remember once the animal has been vaccinated it will have to be killed, it can't stay there as a residue for the disease."

Elsewhere in Europe, the Netherlands has already been given permission to vaccinate in limited circumstances.

The number of confirmed cases of foot-and-mouth disease in the country has risen to 10 and the Dutch Agriculture Ministry has announced plans to slaughter 80,000 animals.

New outbreak

EU governments have so far resisted calls for a wider immunisation campaign, warning of disastrous consequences for livestock exporters who would lose disease-free status on world markets.

UK ministers are hoping a cull of healthy animals in Cumbria will create a firebreak around areas where foot-and-mouth is prevalent, and stop it spreading.

But the revelation that a new case of foot-and-mouth in Devon on Thursday is in an area previously free of outbreaks has raised concern among farming leaders.

Up to half a million sheep will be buried

Earlier Mr Hague called on the prime minister to postpone the anticipated 3 May election, saying this "would be putting party before country".

He said that if he was prime minister he "would be concentrating on fighting this disease and not the election".

Several senior Bishops in the Church of England have joined Mr Hague in urging Mr Blair not to hold a general election this spring.

The Archbishop of York, the Right Reverend David Hope, said: "There is clearly a very strong feeling in the farming community that there should not be an election at the moment".

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