Foot-and-mouth in Northumberland 'a genuine setback'

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The new outbreak of foot-and-mouth in the North-east is a real setback in the fight against the disease, the National Farmers' Union expert on the virus said yesterday as a new case in Cumbria brought the total since the epidemic began to 2,000.

Peter Rudman, the veterinary and public health adviser to the NFU, said the latest cases should not be mistaken for the outbreak's natural and expected "tail". Scientists have been warning since the disease erupted in February that its eradication would not be smooth, and a "last gasp" of outbreaks would be likely to interrupt its decline.

But the 17 cases recorded around Hexham in Northumberland in the last 10 days represent something more serious, Mr Rudman said. "A tail would be a gradual tailing-off in areas where there had been disease – not a slipping back three or four months to where it had been before. That wouldn't be part of the scenario at all. It's very bad news."

Northumberland, where the disease started, had been clear of cases for three months until the latest outbreak. It had been hoped the county would be classified as disease-free this month. Officials from the Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) have called in troops to help. They have set up a 400 square-mile zone of movement restrictions to contain the farms concerned. All livestock on the 17 infected premises and 84 more deemed to be "dangerous contacts" are being slaughtered.

Mr Rudman said the last significant outbreak, in 1967, featured a tail of cases. "There was a period of six to eight weeks without any outbreaks at all, then the disease popped up at 20 to 30 farms over two to three months at the end," he said.

"That was put down to inadequate disinfection and restocking too early. Farms that had had the disease, had their animals slaughtered and then restocked, found that somehow the disease was still lurking there, on the pasture or more probably in the buildings.

"But the situation in Northumbria now is different. This is an area that has not had the disease at all. Whether it has come in through movement of vehicles, of people or of livestock we don't yet know, but it's a very clingy, persistent virus and it doesn't take very much to create a problem. This is a genuine setback. It's not insurmountable, but it's making life a lot more difficult."

However, the director of the Government-funded Institute of Animal Health, Professor Chris Bostock, said it was important to keep the Northumberland outbreak in perspective. "It is a genuine setback, in that the longer it goes on, the more disappointing it is," he said.

"But if you think back to the height of the outbreak, we were getting 40 to 50 cases a day. Here there have been 17 over a 10-day period – an average of 1.7 a day – which is way, way down.

Professor Bostock said the Northumberland outbreak had the potential to grow significantly. "But hopefully they've got it under control," he said.

"It is possible it has been latent at a low-level in a sheep flock for quite some time, and then been passed to cattle, where it is both more visible and more likely to be passed on."