Govt sends in Army to fight outbreak

LONDON - Britain deployed soldiers for the first time yesterday to help combat its five-week-old foot-and-mouth epidemic.

Prime Minister Tony Blair's Labour Government, widely tipped to be planning a May 3 general election, brushed aside angry protests by farmers and pledged to press ahead with a mass cull of healthy animals in areas stricken by the disease.

Blair has signalled that he is ready to resort to draconian measures to ensure that life in rural Britain gets back to normal quickly, particularly as the epidemic is threatening the highly lucrative tourism industry as well as farming.

"If there is to be a fight or a war, it should be against the disease and not against each other," said Agriculture Minister Nick Brown.

The epidemic showed no let-up with officials reporting that the number of infected sites had leapt by 23 to 348.

The Government finally answered calls by farmers and the Opposition Conservatives to deploy troops in the fight against the disease. Initially, about 130 soldiers will help dispose of slaughtered livestock in the southwest English county of Devon, one of the worst affected areas.

The Government's chief veterinary officer Jim Scudamore spent hours yesterday talking to farmers in Cumbria in northwest England, another badly affected area, but was not swayed by pleas to spare the lives of uninfected animals. "It hasn't changed my mind about what should be done," he said.

His words prompted a wave of protests by farmers asking why the Government wanted to kill healthy animals when it was already having trouble culling and destroying diseased animals.

- REUTERS

Herald Online feature: Foot-and-mouth disaster

UK outbreak map

World organisation for animal health

UK Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food

The European Commission for the Control of Foot-and-Mouth Disease

Pig Health/Foot and Mouth feature

Virus databases online