Fear of second NI outbreak

Brid Rodgers: "Worrying news, but no need to panic"

Department of Agriculture vets are investigating another suspected case of foot-and-mouth disease in Northern Ireland, the agriculture minister has announced.

So far, as the number of infected sites in Britain has risen to 183 over two weeks. The province has had only one confirmed case, at a farm in Meigh, south Armagh.

But on Monday afternoon tests were being carried out on a sheep which was taken to an abattoir in County Tyrone.

Speaking at Department of Agriculture headquarters, the minister, Brid Rodgers, said the sheep had been taken from a farm in Augher for slaughter at an abattoir in Dungannon.

It was found to have lesions on its feet and mouth.

'Hot suspect'

She said: "We have had one hot suspect out of 40 sheep. The other 39 are clear.

"Clearly this is not good news. I want to put it in the public domain. But I don't want people to panic. We are taking every single precaution."

Mrs Rodgers said an eight-kilometre surveillance zone had been established around both the farm and abattoir.

She said this was "purely precautionary" while waiting for the results of test samples from the 40 sheep, which she said had all been slaughtered.

The farm in Armagh became infected with the highly contagious livestock disease after sheep were imported from an infected area in Cumbria.

Since the discovery of foot-and-mouth there, department vets have been responding to many calls from farmers concerned about sick livestock.

But only a few cases have been 'warm' or 'hot' suspects and all other cases so far have proven clear of foot-and-mouth.

Search for illegally traded sheep

On Monday morning, Mrs Brid Rodgers told the assembly that the number of sheep in the consignment which led to the foot-and-mouth outbreak in Armagh may have been larger than originally thought.

My staff are presently working with the various police forces to get to the bottom of this. But we are receiving little co-operation from those who are under suspicion

Brid Rodgers

She said there were reports that more contaminated sheep than first thought may have been imported from Britain.

"There are now anecdotal reports that the consignment of sheep which came from GB, and which led to our single outbreak in Armagh, may - and I want to stress the word may, have been larger than we were led to believe," she said.

"My staff are presently working with the various police forces to get to the bottom of this.

"But we are receiving little co-operation from those who are under suspicion."

"Until our inquiries into this new information are complete, I am unable to state categorically that all potentially infected animals have been traced and accounted for."

Appealing for any information to be passed to her department immediately, she said: "We are talking about possibly 60, but it is impossible to be absolutely certain."

An exclusion zone is in place around a farm at Meigh, near the Irish border, where the disease was confirmed on 1 March. Twenty-one sheep have been destroyed on the farm.

And livestock have been destroyed on surrounding farms as a precaution.

Although an isolated case, the outbreak prompted a range of guidelines on ways to contain the disease.

About 2,600 animals have been slaughtered in the province, so far, as a precautionary measure.

Crackdown

Meanwhile, in the Irish Republic, which so far appears clear of foot-and-mouth, further emergency disease prevention legislation came into effect on Friday.

They gave greater powers to officials to regulate livestock dealers and crack down on illegal practices, including tampering with animal identification tags.

Irish police and soldiers are carrying out checks at the Irish border to enforce the ban on livestock and animal products being imported from Northern Ireland.

However, the Irish Natural Resources Minister, Hugh Byrne, has been critical of the British response to the crisis.

Speaking on BBC Radio Ulster on Monday, Mr Byrne said that the "number of cases was increasing every day".

"We are Britain's neighbours and obviously we are worried. We don't want that plague to come into our country," he said.

"And we feel that Britain is not doing enough about it."

The Department of Agriculture can be contacted on its help line numbers on 02890 524279 or 02890 524590 between 0830 - 2100 GMT.