New foot-and-mouth case suspected

A 3km temporary control zone has been set up around premises near Petersfield, said the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

The development comes after 40 cattle were slaughtered at a farm on the Surrey-Berkshire border on Saturday after testing positive for the disease.

That was the fourth farm affected in the past two weeks near Egham, Surrey.

False alarms

A 3km control zone is in place around the affected farms in that area.

A number of sites outside Surrey have also been investigated in the past two weeks and several control zones set up but these have all proved to be false alarms.

In the latest incident the control zone has been placed around premises near the village of Rogate, a spokesman for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affiars.

The farm has not been named but it is understood the field where the suspect animal was grazing was in West Sussex.

Some 1,800 animals have so far been slaughtered but some of the movement restrictions outside the surveillance zone have been lifted.

Licences are now available to allow pigs to be moved for welfare reasons, and the movement of animals up to 3km (1.8 miles) or cows for calving up to 50km (31 miles) between premises belonging to the same owner.

An earlier outbreak in August, which affected two premises, was blamed on the virus escaping from leaking pipes at the nearby Pirbright laboratory site.