-Caveat Lector- From http://www.guardian.co.uk/footandmouth/story/0,7369,443621,00.html >>>Quarantine?!? The whole island(s)?!? A<>Y<>R <<< }}>Begin The making of an epidemic Special report: Foot and mouth disease John Vidal, Paul Brown, Peter Hetherington, and Kate Connolly in Berlin Tuesday February 27, 2001 The Guardian The impossibly tangled web which Ministry of Agriculture staff began to unravel last week now extends across three animal species, five countries and many British counties as foot and mouth disease carried by British sheep threatens to spread though Europe and even further afield. But as mainland Europe continued yesterday to try to identify and quarantine or kill those animals which they suspect may have come into contact with infected British sheep, it was becoming clear that the continental meat trade is so complex that a sheep born in Aberdeenshire could be trucked 1,600 miles before being slaughtered as far away as Beirut. The detective story starts, for the moment, when 40 sheep were sent from Ian Williamson's Prestwick Hall farm at Ponteland near Newcastle airport to Hexham market on February 13. It is known that more than 3,500 animals were sold that day and all the buyers and sellers have to be traced and their animals monitored. The ministry hopes to complete tracing them in the next 24 hours. More than a week later, foot and mouth disease was confirmed among cattle at Prestwick Hall farm shortly after Burnside farm at Heddon-on-the-Wall - barely four miles away - was pinpointed by the Ministry of Agriculture as the likely source of the national outbreak. Vets believe the virus was carried from infected pigs by wind to Prestwick Hall farm, and then to a neighbouring farm at Westerhope, near Newcastle - confirmed yesterday as th e 10th outbreak. They believe that the 40 sheep from Prestwick were sold to Willy Cleave, a Devon dealer who has 11 farms in the west country where he keeps sheep before sending them on to British abattoirs or for export. The 40 were then shipped on February 15 to Longtown market, Carlisle, which is one of the largest sheep markets in Europe and also acts as a holding centre. However the ministry still does not know for certain whether these sheep were th e infected ones. What is known is that the Longtown 40 were collected shortly afterwards and taken to Mr Cleave's Highampton farm in Devon. Cattle there developed foot and mouth but it was not known at the time they had caught it from she ep. On February 21, some sheep from Highampton were trucked to Bromham slaughterhouse in Wiltshire, where they developed foot and mouth. The next day sheep from the same farm were sent to Northampton and sold at the local auc tion. Normally, about 85% of the 1,500 sheep sold that day would go for export but because the export route had been closed on February 17, these sheep would have been held by dealers. All are now being traced. Separately Mr Cleave had, on February 12, trucked 348 sheep from Devon to Germany via Dover on the Cap Afrique, Britain's only dedicated livestock export ferry. Since then according to the ministry, he had sold other batc hes of sheep to British dealers intended for export. All these are also being searched for. The last sheep exports from Britain to the continent were at 2am on February 17. The Cap Afrique left Dover loaded with hundreds of animals bound for Dunkirk. Farmer's Ferry, the company which owns it, said it had exporte d about 30,000 sheepin the two weeks before the ban. The ministry is having to trace all sheep exported on the Cap Afrique in the past three weeks. Yesterday, the German authorities traced the 348 sheep sent directly by Mr Cleave to Germany on February 12 and killed them as a precautionary measure. The Cap Afrique suspended all operations within hours of the first confirmed outbreak, but the European authorities say it may have been too late to prevent the disease spreading through Europe. After long journeys from as far away as Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales and the west country, animals are known to be highly susceptible to disease. If any of those exported in the past few weeks had already been infect ed, they could easily have passed it on. Most live sheep exported from Britain are taken first to any one of more than 60 EU registered "holding stations" where they are kept, often with many thousands of other animals, for up to several days. British exporter s favour a handful of large stations in Belgium and Holland. However, according to Gilles Frojet of the major French holding station La Gatevinière at Argenton L'Eglise, there are many unofficial holding stations in mainland Europe which could also have received infected animals an d could possibly duck the authorities' investigations. Tracing livestock movements in Europe is difficult, said Mike Gooding of Farmers First, a British sheep exporter. British animals have full documentation, but many animals in continental holding centres are resold in job lots to buyers who quite legally alter their papers of origin. "They are all mixed up which adds to the potential for disease and many are bought and sold," said Mr Gooding. >From these staging posts and markets, sheep go all over the continent and many are >re-exported with Dutch, French or Belgian papers 1,000 miles or more to abattoirs in >Italy, Greece and Spain. Hundreds of thousands of ani mals are then re-exported outside Europe, especially to the Middle East and North Africa via Italian ports. Yesterday, the Dutch slaughtered 4,300 animals on 11 farms. The French farm ministry said that up to 47,000 sheep recently imported from Britain had been identified but it had not decided whether to kill them. German officials announced a programme of slaughter for thousands of livestock. It began on two farms in the state of North Rhein Westphalia which, according to the state's agriculture minister, Bärbel Höhn, has received thousands of sheep and pigs from farms in Britain in the past few weeks, including from some of those which have been struck by the disease. "If the virus spread to the continent, the entire European Union would risk losing its status as free of foot and mouth disease," said Bernard Vallat, director-general of the Paris-based International Epizootic Office. "T he re-emergence of the disease in Britainpresents a potential major threat to European exports." Talk about it What do you think? Related special reports Special report: what's wrong with our food? Special report: countryside in crisis Related articles 26.02.2001: Farmers' hopes go up in flames 26.02.2001: Dirty farm row grows 'We'll be destroyed by this' 23.02.2001: Global disease on the rise 23.02.2001: The countryside waits... and hopes 22.02.2001, leader: Down on the farm Background 21.02.2001, the issue explained: Foot-and-mouth disease 21.02.2001, NetNotes: Pigs Interactive The countryside in crisis Useful links Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food Meat and livestock commission National Farmers Union National Pig Association World organisation for animal health: foot-and-mouth disease Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2001 End<{{ A<>E<>R Forwarded as information only; no endorsement to be presumed + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without charge or profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this type of information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Integrity has no need of rules. -Albert Camus (1913-1960) + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The libertarian therefore considers one of his prime educational tasks is to spread the demystification and desanctification of the State among its hapless subjects. 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