Disease clean-up to continue

The cost of the clampdown has been revealed

Scotland's foot-and-mouth clean-up programme has not been affected by concerns about cost.

Prime Minister Tony Blair has ordered a halt to similar work in England, pending a review of costs which are said to be running at £100,000 a farm.

In Scotland, the cost is around a third of that - but the final bill is still expected to reach £15m.

A Scottish Executive spokeswoman confirmed that the announcement on the clampdown in England did not affect Scotland, but could not explain the cross Border disparity in cost.

Most of the cleaning has been completed

The cleansing and disinfecting teams can spend as much as two months on one farm to conduct the painstaking clean-up process.

The spokesman said: "We have followed Defra (the Department of Environment, Farming and Rural Affairs) guidelines in letting contracts for cleaning and disinfecting.

"Any difference between contract costs in Scotland and England is a matter for Defra."

Blood testing of sheep within 10km of infected premises should be completed within the next five to six days, the spokesman added.

All tests to date have came back negative, but officials have warned against any complacency.

Local authority involvement

Farmers north of the Border have been urged to maintain security measures until all testing has been completed.

Meanwhile, a Defra spokesman said there was no obvious explanation for the cost difference between Scotland and England.

He said: "That is precisely why we are looking into it, to see if there is a difference, or if we are counting things differently, or if it is something like the units being bigger. We don't know at this stage.

"In Scotland a lot of the local authorities got involved in the work, but in England local authorities have not been as interested in doing the work."