By David Brown and Richard Savill
Electronic Telegraph
FOOT
and mouth disease spread to Settle in the Yorkshire Dales National Park yesterday,
an area popular with tourists. The Conservatives said the fresh outbreak undermined
Government claims that the epidemic was under control.
 A
total of 144 cattle and 457 sheep were being destroyed near the town on two holdings
at Langcliffe and one at Giggleswick. The outbreaks are about 10 miles away from
previously confirmed cases and they were outside officially designated infected
areas. The region is heavily dependent on farming and tourism. On Thursday the
Ministry of Agriculture had mistakenly reported one of the outbreaks as being
in Cumbria.
Yesterday Maff vets were drawing up a list of "dangerous contact"
farms, raising the prospect of more culls in the National Park in an attempt to
stop the virus spreading farther. The total number of outbreaks in the United
Kingdom rose to 1,603, an increase of four on the previous day.
Tim Yeo,
shadow minister of agriculture, said: "The Settle outbreaks are worrying, fresh
evidence that foot and mouth is still spreading to new areas. This casts doubts
on Tony Blair's claim that the disease is fully under control."
The National
Farmers' Union in the North East said: "This is disastrous for that area which
has been free from the disease for the whole crisis. These outbreaks could have
serious consequences for scores of other farmers on neighbouring fell land in
the Yorkshire Dales. There are huge areas of open grazing there."
Nick
Brown, minister of agriculture, appealed to Ben Gill, president of the National
Farmers' Union, last night for more co-operation "to bear down" on the disease
and overcome mounting resistance to official culls.
In a letter he admitted
that the disease would persist "for some time" and disclosed that he was concerned
about the number of cases where farmers were resorting to legal action to block
culls and where authorities were having to obtain legal powers to carry them out.
He
said: "There is no question of denying people fair treatment. This disease can
yet cause considerable problems if we let up on our efforts. I hope you will join
me in urging on the farming community increased support for our difficult but
necessary eradication policies and renewed vigilance and care in their own conduct,
as we hope we are approaching the end of the epidemic."
The Yorkshire set-back
came as Maff tried to play down criticisms by one of its own civil servants that
the Ministry had no contingency plans to deal with a crisis on the scale of this
foot and mouth epidemic and had used "medieval technology" to dispose of carcasses.
He also criticised the joint culling and disposal operation by the Army and Maff
in Devon.
Michael Tas, director of Maff's disposal operations, told a
meeting of Dartmoor farmers: "We are still using medieval technology in the 21st
century. We have a lot to learn about safely incinerating animals in the open.
I do not think the arrangement in this area between the Army and the state veterinary
service worked terribly well. There will be a lot of soul searching done to find
out what has happened."
Delays in disposal, which created a backlog of
200,000 carcasses in Devon, resulted from Maff's tough slaughter deadline. He
said: "Maff had no contingency plans for the size and speed of this outbreak."
He
also said that a revolutionary method of confirming a case of foot and mouth within
two or three hours, which had been pioneered in America, had not been considered
because Maff did not have the time or the scientists to look at it properly.
The
Ministry of Agriculture defended Mr Tas last night and said that only part of
what he said at a meeting to demonstrate Maff's "openness" had been reported.
A Maff source in London said: "He is not an expert on foot and mouth disease.
He has been mugged, effectively."
An investigation by Government scientists
has found no evidence that the foot and mouth virus is spread by funeral pyres
of animal carcasses. Preliminary results of a joint inquiry by the Institute of
Animal Health at Pirbright, Surrey, the Ministry of Agriculture and the Met Office
say that it is "highly unlikely" that the virus is spread on thermal air currents
from the pyres.
The early results of the investigation, produced by a team
of scientists including Dr Alex Donaldson, the top scientist at Pirbright, after
studies of six pyres in Devon, Essex and Worcestershire, are published today in
The Veterinary Record, official journal of the British Veterinary Association. |
