Our wildest nightmare - it really is the British government who has infected their own country with Foot and Mouth Disease and is now taking it out on the farmers.
U.K. foot-and-mouth outbreak linked to lab LONDON - The strain of foot-and-mouth disease found on a farm in southern England was identical to one used at a nearby laboratory, Britain’s environment agency said Saturday.
The highly infectious disease was detected on a farm outside Wanborough, about 30 miles southwest of London. A nearby government-funded lab is researching vaccines for the virus.
Britain banned exports of livestock, meat and milk Saturday after the outbreak of highly infectious foot-and-mouth disease and halted the movement of cattle, sheep, goats and pigs nationwide in a bid to prevent the spread of the virus.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown vowed to work “night and day” to avoid a repeat of a 2001 epidemic when 7 million cattle were culled and the farming industry was devastated.
“Our first priority has been to act quickly and decisively,” said Brown, who returned to London from a summer holiday to deal with the outbreak. He chaired a meeting of the government’s crisis committee, COBRA, on Saturday.
“I can assure people … we are doing everything in our power to look at the scientific evidence and to get to the bottom of what has happened and then to eradicate this disease,” he said.
The government-funded Institute for Animal Health’s Pirbright Laboratory, which is researching the disease, is about four miles from the affected farm.
The government’s chief veterinarian, Debby Reynolds, ordered a new six-mile protection zone to be set up around the farm and the lab.
Britain’s top veterinary official said the virus was not one found in animals, and instead matched a strain being held at nearby disease-research and vaccine production facilities.
“This is a strain … that is contained in the Pirbright facility and is associated with vaccine production,” Reynolds told Sky News television. She said authorities were investigating biosecurity arrangements at the laboratory site.
-APNews
With help like this from our dearly beloved government and fearless leaders we will surely need NAIS, to protect us from the government… Is it time to being mandatory tagging and tracking of all government employees and politicians so that when there are disease outbreaks we can round them up for eradication in order to protect the rest of us from their disease generating, filthy habits? Something that has been often noted here and elsewhere is government employees, inspectors and what-not, are important disease vectors due to their moving about between farms, and labs, without following appropriate bio-security procedures. That is the most likely explanation for this outbreak - government incompetence.
Hat tip to many people.