Foot, mouth calamity for UK farmers

The meat industry faces yet another setback after all exports are banned. MICHAEL McCARTHY and STEPHEN CASTLE report.

Britain's farming industry was plunged into a potentially devastating crisis yesterday as the first outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease for 20 years led to the British Government and the European Union banning British exports of meat, livestock and milk.

The blanket prohibition, similar in scale to the financially calamitous BSE export ban, could have catastrophic consequences for British farmers, who annually export nearly £600 million of beef, lamb and pork, both as live exports and meat.

The ban, which takes effect immediately and will be reviewed at the end of the month by the European Commission's standing veterinary committee, led the President of the National Farmers' Union, Ben Gill, to declare: "It is like staring into the abyss.

"On top of all the problems we have had to surmount in the last few years, the impact is unthinkable."

The effect of the ban will clearly depend on the source of the outbreak being quickly found and closely contained, by slaughter of all potentially affected animals.

Nick Brown, the Agriculture Minister, said last night that extra resources were being deployed to act swiftly and firmly against the outbreak, confirmed at an abattoir and neighbouring farm in Essex.



All farmers who had no choice but to slaughter livestock affected by the disease would be compensated at the full market value for each animal, Brown said.



The export ban was imposed in Brussels last night at the end of a day in which scientists from the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Maff) had made strenuous efforts to trace the origin of the outbreak at the Cheale Meats abattoir in Little Warley, near Brentwood, and the adjoining farm.

Both the farm and the abattoir are owned by Paul Cheale.

The disease, which does not threaten human health but is immensely debilitating in all cloven-hooved livestock, was found in a group of pigs which had been sent to the abattoir for slaughter from two farms in Buckinghamshire and the Isle of Wight.

Yesterday all three farms - as well as two more suppliers of the abattoir in Stroud, Gloucestershire, and Selby, Yorkshire - were quarantined, under investigation and ringed by 8km zones in which all farm animal movement was prohibited.

The Government's Chief Veterinary Officer, Jim Scudamore, said suppliers to the Essex premises were from all over the UK, including Northern Ireland, north England and Scotland, although there were no foreign animals involved.

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