010828 Foot-and-Mouth a Lingering EU Epidemic

Crickhowell, Wales - The sight of a drooling, fidgety calf stopped John Morris in his tracks. Foot-and-mouth disease- officially proclaimed “under control” four months ago - had struck his farm.

“It was a roller coaster after then,” said Morris, who discovered the infection in mid-July. “It's like what you hear about what happens between a death in the family and the funeral.”

His neighbor, Phillip Bromwell, has placed disinfectant mats at the entrance to his farm and politely turns away visitors at the gate, hoping not to be the next victim of a stubborn outbreak in the Brecon Beacons, a swath of rugged hills in south Wales.

Both farmers are caught in what government scientists call “the long tail” of an epidemic declining from a peak of 40 or more new cases per day in late March.

An average of four new cases are currently found in Britain every day, three months after Prime Minister Tony Blair proclaimed that the campaign to eradicate the virus was in the home stretch.

“It's a bloody long home straight, isn't it? The longest home straight in history,” Bromwell fumed at his farm gate.

Professor David King, the government's chief scientist, said in April that foot-and-mouth was “fully under control.” King was unavailable Wednesday, but a spokesman said the statement was not premature, as most of the country is disease-free and efforts were concentrated on the remaining hotspots.

Since the epidemic began, 3.7 million livestock have been slaughtered. And on Thursday, Wales chief veterinarian Tony Edwards announced that at least 2,000 more sheep would be culled in Brecon Beacons - in addition to 6,500 already slaughtered there.

As the disease rolls on, Welsh farmers and tour operators express far less optimism. Restrictions on movement intended to stop the disease chafe against the needs of the tourist industry, which is eager to get the countryside back to normal. The ripples have spread far into the economy: British Airways this week blamed the disease for scaring away tourists and depressing the airline's profits.

Morris, an organic farmer, is still baffled that his farm was the first among the picturesque hills between Crickhowell and Abergavenny to be diagnosed with the disease.

Morris said his 280 sheep and 18 beef cattle had neither been moved nor placed in direct contact with other livestock since the epidemic began in February. Wind or wildlife may have carried the virus from an earlier “cluster” of outbreaks 15 miles away, he speculated.

“We were astounded,” he recalled of the morning of July 14, when one of his calves was acting peculiarly. “I noticed, `Oh God, she's drooling.”'

By early afternoon, a veterinarian had confirmed the infection. Government slaughtermen moved in. An auctioneer valued his livestock, and they were all dead by nightfall.

The slaughter team assigned to the area is still stationed within eyesight of the two hillside farms, ready to pounce on the next outbreak. It's been three weeks since the cull and Bromwell has good reason to believe the disease has miraculously skipped his farm. Oddly, it can be argued that his infected neighbor was the lucky one.

Morris will receive government compensation for the loss of his livestock - a slightly below-market-price sum that should tide him over until the epidemic passes. Bromwell, however, gets no assistance although disease control measures prevent him from selling any of his 25 beef cattle.

There are now suspicions that the slaughter-and-compensate policy has bred a cycle of corruption among struggling farmers, appraisers and privately run cleanup crews that is prolonging the epidemic.

A Welsh farmer told newspapers recently that a telephone caller offered to sell her an infected sheep for $2,800. A few days earlier, Blair halted cleanup payments after a government investigation found costs in some cases were 10 times higher than similar projects in other European countries.

While neither corruption nor intentional infection has been proven, Bromwell and Morris say it is plausible.

“The motive exists for a sheep farmer who is completely shut down and can't move anything to market,” says Bromwell. “If you're not selling sheep, you're getting overcrowding and you've got to spend more money on feed. You're also not bringing in any money and your bank manager is getting on your back.”

Adds Morris: “You can't have 70,000 farmers without a few bad apples. You can't have dozens of (cleaning) contractors making money off this without a few wanting to keep it going. There has to be a temptation to drag this on.”

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