010317 Irish Combat Livestock Imports

Dromad, Ireland - Police checkpoints jammed traffic along the Belfast-to- Dublin highway, but livestock smugglers may already have outflanked Ireland's nationwide alert against foot-and-mouth disease.

"Instead of having a ring of steel on the border, we have a sieve," said Ireland's main opposition leader, Michael Noonan, as authorities struggled to track down sheep illegally imported from neighboring Northern Ireland.

The first foot-and-mouth outbreak in Northern Ireland was confirmed Thursday, near the border.

During an emergency debate in Ireland's parliament, Prime Minister Bertie Ahern announced that more than 1,000 police and soldiers were mounting round- the-clock checkpoints at seaports, air terminals and more than a hundred roads connecting the Republic of Ireland and the British-ruled north.

The goal was to deter livestock smugglers and to get all visitors to run their shoes or vehicle tires over mats splashed with disinfectant.

Officials from every corner of Irish society - determined to defend a livestock industry that employs 200,000 people and generates $6 billion a year - did their bit to deter the transmission of the microbe, which can hitch rides on humans.

Tourist attractions were closed and all sporting events canceled, as were all court cases involving witnesses from rural areas. Disinfectant mats were being prepared for weekend church services. Travel agents were refunding mass bookings worldwide for the St. Patrick's Day celebrations, which have also been canceled.

But it could be too late.

Authorities were enforcing exclusion zones around two meat-processing plants and at least four farms that received sheep smuggled from England via Northern Ireland in the past two weeks. No cases of the disease were confirmed.

Like other European Union members, Ireland barred livestock imports from the United Kingdom right after the first case of foot-and-mouth disease was discovered in England on Feb. 19.

But smugglers apparently continued to ship livestock from the north to the south, exploiting the strength of the British pound versus the euro, the European currency which sets the value of the Irish pound. The smugglers also gain by illegally claiming European Union farming subsidies not available in the north.

The smugglers' home base is South Armagh, a borderland notorious for Irish Republican Army activity, where police cannot operate without fear of assassination. Although the IRA has been observing a cease-fire since 1997, some of its senior members have carved out lucrative smuggling rackets in animals and fuel.

On Thursday, Northern Irish authorities confirmed that 21 sheep in the South Armagh village of Meigh, just north of the border, had foot-and-mouth disease. The herd was killed and burned.

Police simultaneously announced that smugglers had already moved about 250 English-sourced sheep from Meigh to a southern Irish plant in County Roscommon. Some of those butchered animals, Irish agriculture officials acknowledged Friday, have been shipped to France.

The French agriculture ministry announced Friday that it was banning imports of livestock from Ireland amid disease concerns.

In a statement, the ministry said its decision to halt imports of cows, sheep, goats, pigs and other cloven-footed animals was a preventative measure and made in collaboration with Irish authorities.

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