Foot-and-mouth spreads to France

France's farmers had fought to keep disease at bay

Foot-and-mouth disease has been confirmed in France, marking failure in the long battle to confine the disease to the UK.

The outbreak - the first on mainland Europe - is on a farm at Mayenne in north-western France, on the Loire-Normandy borders.

Within hours, other European countries began urgently stepping up their measures to counter the disease, including a new slaughter in Germany and immediate curbs on the few animal movements still allowed under EU regulations.

In the UK - where 13 new cases were confirmed on Tuesday, taking the total to 196 - Agriculture Minister Nick Brown said he "deeply regretted" the spread of the disease to France.

But Mr Brown said nothing more could have been done by the UK, which banned exports as soon as the outbreak began in February.

This justifies all the draconian measures that we have taken over the past 15 days

French Agriculture Minister Jean Glavany

Tens of thousands of farm animals have already been destroyed in Britain, and large areas of the countryside have been put off limits to visitors.

Confirmation of the disease in France came after urgent tests were carried out on six animals showing classic symptoms of foot-and-mouth disease. Vets' worst fears were confirmed on Tuesday morning by the French Agriculture Ministry.

Officials at the ministry say the afflicted herd was close to a farm which had imported sheep from the UK in February. The sheep had all been slaughtered and an exclusion zone set up.

Slaughter

France had implemented some of Europe's toughest measures against foot-and-mouth disease, fearing it had entered the country in animals imported from the UK before the alarm was sounded.

The case "justifies all the draconian measures that we have taken over the past 15 days," Agriculture Minister Jean Glavany said on French radio.

French measures

6 March: EU-wide ban on livestock movement except for slaughter

5 March: Ban on animal transport, and exclusion zones around suspected farms

2 and 3 March: Ban on imports from the Irish Republic and Belgium

28 Feb: Destruction of 30,000 sheep

27 Feb: Destruction of 20,000 sheep and carcasses that may have come from Britain

"I fear that there are other cases, and I'm doing everything to limit it as much as possible."

Mr Glavany said that at least half the 20,000 sheep slaughtered in France after being imported from the UK had been carrying the virus.

A slaughter of the 114 animals at Mayenne began on Monday night as soon as the symptoms were spotted, said officials.

The news that France has lost its battle to avoid foot-and-mouth will come as a devastating blow, and fuels fears that the disease may spread further across Europe.

France has slaughtered tens of thousands of animals

UK farmers' leader Ben Gill, emerging from talks with Prime Minister Tony Blair, expressed what he called "enormous sadness for the French Government and farming community".

Within days of the foot-and-mouth outbreak being confirmed in Britain on 21 February, France had begun a mass slaughter of animals which had been imported from the UK or had come into contact with them.

Stricter measures

But officials feared from the start that the number of imported animals - and the fact that the virus could be carried on the wind or by birds - meant that an outbreak would be difficult to avoid.

Under European Union regulations, all movement of livestock has been banned unless the animals are being taken directly to slaughterhouses.

But after confirmation of the Mayenne foot-and-mouth outbreak, France's neighbours reacted with even tougher measures:

• the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia announced that all sheep imported from France in the last three weeks would be destroyed
• the Netherlands announced an immediate ban on all animal transport, and officials will track down all French imports from the past three weeks
• Belgium imposed an immediate ban on French livestock being brought to slaughterhouses.

A foot-and-mouth alert has also been declared in Italy, where antibodies to the disease were found in French sheep taken to a slaughterhouse near Pescara in Abruzzi, central Italy.

The discovery shows the sheep have been exposed to foot-and-mouth - further tests are being conducted to see if the disease itself is present.