UK battles foot-and-mouth outbreak

[Bolt_Gundam510]

LONDON, England (CNN) -- British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, cutting short his holiday retreat to deal with an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease, said on Saturday the government would act decisively and promptly to contain, eradicate and identify the source of the disease.

"We will be doing night and day everything in our power to make sure that what happens happens quickly and happens decisively in a way that can reassure people that everything is being done," Brown said.

Brown said Britain's "first priority has been to act quickly and decisively. That's why we have a national ban already imposed on the movement of sheep, pigs and cattle" and have created exclusion zones and started culling of the herd."

The crisis has prompted a European Union ban on livestock imports from Britain.

Japan said it had banned British pork imports. Beef imports from Britain have been banned in Japan since the outbreak of mad cow disease in the 1990s.

Brown conferred with the COBRA team, Britain's crisis panel, on Friday night from Dorset in response to the news that foot and mouth disease was found in cattle on a farm near Guildford in Surrey, England.

On Saturday, Brown chaired a meeting with the COBRA team and will hold another that involves setting out a prompt and thorough "coordinated response" to the development.

Brown's office said an "exclusion zone has been established around the premises in the village of Wanborough, near Guildford, and around 60 animals are expected to be culled."

The office said a 10-kilometer zone "around the farm will be closely monitored for signs of any further infection and a nationwide ban has been placed on the movement of pigs and other livestock."

The farm has been under restrictions since late Thursday, when symptoms were reported to a local animal health office, Britain's Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) said in a news release.

Laboratory results indicated Friday that the virus -- which poses almost no threat to humans -- was found in the cattle, DEFRA said.

In accordance with laws on the matter, all cattle on the premises are to be culled.

Plans created in the aftermath of a 2001 outbreak of the disease are well tested and established, and are being followed to the letter, Brown's office says.

During that 2001 outbreak, nearly 2,000 cases of foot-and-mouth disease were found.

At the epidemic's height, the average was 40 new cases a day. More than 3.5 million sheep, cows and pigs were slaughtered in a bid to contain the disease, which diminishes animals productivity and ruins export markets.

The government was accused of reacting too slowly, allowing the highly infectious disease to spread.

Foot-and-mouth disease crosses the species barrier from cattle to human only with very great difficulty, the DEFRA statement said.

The last human case reported in Britain occurred in 1966. The disease in humans, in the very rare cases that have occurred, is mild, short-lived and requires no medical treatment.

Richard Macdonald, director general of the British National Farmers Union, said the incident conjures the developments in 2001.

He said there is "a stop of livestock movements immediately and a ban on all exports," strictures that automatically kick in.

The priority now, MacDonald said, is to swiftly contain the outbreak of the disease to make sure it doesn't spread, eradicate the disease, and identify and trace the source of the outbreak so it can be contained.

"We're very nervous and we don't know the extent of it at this stage," Macdonald said.

He said it is "probably pretty obvious this is going to have an immediate impact on our marketplace."

If it's a "sole outbreak "and if it is contained, then "trading" will resume quickly, he said.

Source: CNN WORLD

[Atasas]

I do live just on one side of "it" do work on another....

anyways, this latest outbreak should get Simpsons treatment.... "Filfy nerds create a virus! Hounds tobe released!"... just a thought...