Farmers face nervous wait (From Witney Gazette)

Farmers face nervous wait

FARMERS in Oxfordshire face a nervous wait following an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in Surrey.

Cobra, the Government's emergency committee, met yesterday in response to the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Environment Minister Hilary Benn cancelled their holidays to return to London to deal with the infection on a farm near Guildford, Surrey.

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has imposed a three-kilometre "protection zone" and a ten-kilometre "surveillance zone" around the farm. All the cattle on the infected farm are to be killed.

A nationwide ban on the movement of all sheep, cattle and pigs has also been put in place.

Farmers in Oxfordshire fear a repeat of the 2001 epidemic, which devastated the farming and tourism industries.

Colin Dawes, of Foxbury Farm, Brize Norton, which has 90 sheep, 250 cattle, 250 pigs, and a popular farm shop, said: "We are waiting to see what happens and if the measures they have put in place will work.

"We are obviously concerned because if the control measures don't work it could spread like it did last time.

"Nobody wants to go through what we had to then. The farming industry doesn't need a knock like that.

"We can survive for three weeks without moving any animals and by that time it will either all be over or it will have spread into large areas."

The 2001 epidemic led to the slaughter of between 6.5 and 10 million animals, ruined many rural businesses and is estimated to have cost the country up to £8.5bn.

A Defra spokesman said work was this weekend continuing at the farm and refused to comment on whether any other farms were involved.

He said: "Nationally no animal movements are allowed except under licence, controls are in place on movement of animal carcasses, animal gatherings, shearing and dipping are restricted, and all farms must increase levels of biosecurity."

Prime Minister Gordon Brown promised that the authorities were doing "everything in our power" to ensure that the outbreak did not spread.

He said his top priority was to act "quickly and decisively" to halt the spread of the infection.

Asked if there was a danger of an epidemic on the scale of 2001, he said: "We are doing everything in our power to avoid a repeat of those incidents."