010240 Britain Bans Meat Exports

London - The government expanded the exclusion area around a slaughterhouse where pigs were found infected with foot-and-mouth disease Thursday, one day after exports of British meat, milk and livestock were banned.

Britain suspended exports on Wednesday, and the European Union quickly announced its own ban on British exports to other member countries until March 1. The United States, Canada, Australia and Singapore also suspended their imports of affected products.

The highly infectious disease is not regarded as a danger to humans but could cause serious damage to British farmers, already hurt by last summer's outbreak of swine fever and the long-running mad cow crisis.

Farmers' leaders met with government officials Thursday to discuss ways of containing the outbreak, the first in Britain in 20 years.

No new cases have been reported but “it's far too early to say that we are through and out the other side,” Agriculture Minister Nick Brown said.

The export ban will cost British farmers at least $12 million a week, Brown said.

The disease was discovered Monday in 27 pigs at a slaughterhouse at Little Warley in Essex county, northeast of London. The exclusion area around the abattoir was expanded to 10 miles and controls set up around five farms, from Yorkshire in the north of England to the Isle of Wight off the southern coast, that supplied pigs to the slaughterhouse.

Officials were checking on livestock at farms within a 2-mile area of the exclusion area.

“We mustn't panic about this. What we must all do is to be vigilant,” said Ben Gill, president of the National Farmers' Union, told the British Broadcasting Corp.

Foot-and-mouth disease affects cloven-footed animals, including sheep, goats and cows. It is not usually fatal but can cause weight loss and reduced dairy production in cattle. It can spread quickly through the air.

The Food Standards Agency said transmission to humans is extremely rare but possible if a person is in close contact with an infected animal. It said humans cannot catch the disease by eating meat or drinking pasteurized milk.

The EU said it would review its ban at a Feb. 27 meeting of the Standing Veterinary Committee.

The United States, which halted its imports of British pork and pork products, bought just 4,000 tons in 1999 and “substantially less” in 2000, the Agriculture Department said.

The carcasses of more than 1,000 pigs slaughtered at the affected slaughterhouse since Monday would be destroyed, director Paul Cheale said. The government said a further 300 pigs and 60 cattle had been slaughtered at the abattoir.

Veterinary officials said it could take several weeks to determine the source of the infection. Tests showed the strain identified in Britain was similar to one that caused outbreaks in Japan, South Korea, Mongolia and Russia, chief veterinary officer Jim Scudamore said.

The last foot-and-mouth outbreak in Britain occurred in 1981. An outbreak in 1967 led to the slaughter of more than 400,000 animals. A repeat of that slaughter “would be a death knell for British farming,” Gill said.

Mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy - a suspected cause of the fatal variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans - reached epidemic proportions in Britain after it was diagnosed in 1986.

The epidemic resulted in wholesale herd slaughtering, mandatory testing and an EU ban on British beef exports that has since been lifted.

RETURN TO HOME PAGE

E-mail: sflanagan@sprintmail.com