Global panic: all countries under foot-and-mouth threat

LONDON - Global panic is not an excessive term for the consternation over Europe's outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease that has swept around the world in the last 36 hours.

Yesterday about 90 countries, according to European Union officials in Brussels, had taken action either against Britain, France or the whole EU by banning imports of livestock and meat products, with a number of them also proclaiming that they intended physically disinfecting travellers from Europe.

From Indonesia and Hong Kong to the United States, from Norway to Australia, from Morocco to New Zealand, nervous agriculture ministries issued their banning decrees.

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation in Rome led the way by warning that foot-and-mouth disease was a global threat, urging tougher controls on food imports and on immigrants and tourists.

"Any country around the world might be contaminated," said Yves Cheneau, chief of FAO's animal health service and its senior expert on foot-and-mouth. "When we look at the way the virus spreads, it's very clear that every country is threatened."

No country could consider itself safe from the disease because of increased international trade, intensified farming, immigration, tourism, the movement of animals, animal products and foodstuffs, Cheneau said. He added that more aid should be made available to tackle the virus in its endemic areas of Africa, the Middle East, Asia and South America.

Fourteen new cases were discovered in the United Arab Emirates yesterday, bringing the total number of cases in the country to at least 22.

But although the disease is endemic in many parts of the globe, the news of its spread within Europe, from Britain into France, prompted the United States, Canada, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand and South Korea to halt imports of EU meat products immediately, with many other countries following suit.

Australia further tightened airport quarantine controls on European and Argentine travellers as it sought to make sure foot-and-mouth did not creep in.

Officials said they were horrified about the possibility of an especially virulent strain of foot and mouth disease entering the country, the largest beef exporter in the world.

Norway, in Europe but not in the European Union, banned EU meat and dairy imports in a move which led to the tightest security on the country's border with Sweden since the end of the German occupation in 1945.

Farmers gathered at one border crossing to dissuade people from entering the country with farm products; thousands of Norwegians who travel to Sweden to stock up on cheaper meat will now have their shopping confiscated when they return home.

German police began guarding normally unmanned border crossings with France, where the first case of foot-and-mouth on the European mainland was found on Tuesday.

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