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LONDON - Animal health officials said on Wednesday a third suspected outbreak of foot and mouth disease had been found in southern England, but a ban on sending animals to slaughter was lifted in most of the country.
The European Union decided after an emergency meeting of veterinary experts in Brussels to maintain a ban on all British fresh meat, milk and live animal exports because of the foot and mouth outbreak. They will review the ban again on August 23.
Britain's farming union warned members not to drop their guard despite the easing of restrictions on animal movement.
Government inspectors have said there is a "strong probability" the disease originated in two research laboratories near the infected farms in Surrey, southern England, and are carrying out further tests to try to confirm the theory.
Britain's chief veterinary officer said she had ordered livestock to be destroyed on suspicion of foot and mouth disease on a third farm in the area.
"I cannot rule out that disease is developing on the premises," Debby Reynolds told a news conference.
She said there was a low "but not negligible" risk that the virus could spread from the surveillance zone set up around the infected farms to the rest of the country.
After the first outbreak was confirmed last Friday, the government banned animal movements to stop it from spreading.
Reynolds said the government would allow live animals to be moved direct to slaughter and dead animals to be collected from farms outside the affected area from midnight on Wednesday, but only under "stringent" biosecurity guidelines.
The ban on livestock movement had threatened farmers' livelihoods and led to fears that abattoirs would have to lay off workers and shops would start to run out of meat.
However, several supermarket chains said fears of shortages were unfounded. "There is plenty of meat on the shelves," a spokeswoman for the Tesco chain said.
Britain's livestock industry, with annual meat exports worth more than $1 billion (490 million pounds), fears a repeat of a foot and mouth crisis in 2001 that devastated farming and cost the country about 8.5 billion pounds ($17 billion).
The National Farmers' Union (NFU) estimates export curbs imposed this time cost farmers 1.8 million pounds a day.
The NFU welcomed the lifting of the ban on moving livestock but urged farmers not to lower their guard.
"I think that to say the worst may be over is presumptuous. Do not underestimate that we still have the disease in the country," Kevin Pearce, the NFU's director of food and farming, told Reuters.
Investigators hunting for the source of the outbreak are focusing on two laboratories close to the infected area. Both laboratories, which develop vaccines against foot and mouth, handle the same rare strain of the virus that has struck herds.
A preliminary report on the outbreak said on Tuesday there was a real possibility that the release of the virus involved "human movement" but investigators are also looking closely at the drainage system at one of the labs.
The government-run Institute for Animal Health and another lab, Merial Animal Health, owned by US firm Merck and French firm Sanofi-Aventis SA, occupy the same site in Pirbright, about 5 miles (8 km) from the affected farms.
Merial said it had complete confidence in its health and safety procedures and had found no evidence the virus had been carried from the laboratory by humans.
- REUTERS
