UK eases disease restrictions

Hundreds of thousands of animals have been culled to try and stop the spread of the disease

LONDON, England -- Infected area restrictions on 1,300 farms in foot-and-mouth outbreak areas in Britain have been lifted.

Countryside Minister Elliot Morley said that with few or no recent cases in some areas of Devon, Cornwall and Somerset the move will enable farmers to apply for licences to move their livestock -- although they remain subject to national crisis regulations.

The easing comes the same day as it was announced that the British farm worker feared to be the first person to contract foot-and-mouth disease amid the current crisis has tested negative for the virus.

AUDIO British Agriculture Minister Nick Brown: Delighted that tests were negative 192kb/17secs. AIFF or WAV sound

Three of eight suspected human cases of foot-and-mouth disease have proved false alarms, and Agriculture Minister Nick Brown indicated on Friday that Paul Stamper of Cumbria was one of these.

Stamper was splashed with fluid from a slaughtered cow as he helped move carcasses, creating a media storm when it was suspected he may have caught the mild disease which is usually confined to cloven-hoofed animals.

A spokesman for the Public Health Laboratory Service said the latest results meant it was now "very unlikely" that any of the eight people tested so far had foot-and-mouth -- though there will be follow-up tests.

There has been only one previous case of someone in the United Kingdom contracting foot-and-mouth with agricultural salesman Robert Brewis suffering from the disease in 1966, shortly before the last major epidemic.

Nearly 1,500 cases in British livestock have been confirmed since it first broke out in late February, with 26 cases in the Netherlands, two in France and one in Ireland.

Morley said the latest easing of restrictions was good news: "I am particularly pleased that we are able to lift some of the restrictions in Cornwall, Devon and Somerset.

"This is very good news for the West Country as it is the first time since the start of the foot-and-mouth outbreak that we have been in a position to release farms in heavily affected areas from infected area restrictions."

Regulations require three-kilometre protection zones and 10-kilometre surveillance zones around infected premises with all susceptible livestock in the protection zone inspected regularly for 21 days.

In total 16,417 farms have now had such restrictions lifted, and Morley emphasised that the process to do so was "rigorous."

It means the farmers will be able to take animals to any slaughterhouse willing to accept them as long as it can be reached in an uninterrupted journey of less than four-and-a-half hours.

A vet no longer has to inspect the animals before movement.

Meanwhile in the Netherlands, farmers caught up in the crisis have been protesting at what they believe to be low levels of foot-and-mouth compensation brought chaos to roads across the country.

Dutch cattle and pig farmers blocked roads and halted traffic in 10 towns across the country on Friday in their call for more compensation, the Traffic Information Centre told the Reuters news agency.

At Amersfoort in central Netherlands about 50 tractors took to the roads in a go-slow, while in the east of the country traffic was backed-up for up to nine kilometres (five miles) on the A1 between Apeldoorn and Henglo.

Pig farmers, flouting a court ruling against demonstrations in the south of the country, handed out leaflets which criticised their Agriculture Minister Laurens Jan Brinkhorst.

"Brinkhorst is not making good his promises," they said. "He has abandoned the pig farmers in this crisis."

UK eases cattle cull
April 26, 2001
Foot-and-mouth symptoms in humans
April 24, 2001
Foot-and-mouth: UK man feared ill
April 24, 2001
Foot-and-mouth cases rise
April 22, 2001
New human foot-and-mouth scares
April 25, 2001
UK urged to end cattle slaughter
April 21, 2001

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