Implications for Ireland: The last outbreak offoot-and-mouth disease hit the Irish economy but left improvements in its wake, writes Seán MacConnell, Agriculture Correspondent
The level of anxiety created by the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in Britain has served to highlight the importance of agriculture in the Irish economy, which suffered badly during the last outbreak in 2001.
Not only does foot-and-mouth endanger the €2 billion beef and cattle trade from the island but it also places at risk most of the €7 billion food and drink industry exports from the State and the 250,000 jobs in farming and processing.
In order to protect the sector during 2001, tourism, sporting and cultural events were cancelled and the countryside was placed out of bound for walkers, anglers, hunting and other activities.
Ireland might have won the Triple Crown in Rugby that year but that crucial game was cancelled as was the Cheltenham race festival and the St Patrick's Day Parade in Dublin.
One woman went to the bother of phoning the Department of Agriculture helpline to ask the then minister, Joe Walsh, who happened to take the call, whether it would be all right for her daughter to proceed with her wedding.
The Irish public responded magnificently in support of agriculture and in a report drawn up in 2002 outlining the loss to the economy, it was estimated that there was a direct decline of over €200 million as a result.
Most people, including Irish Farming Association president Padraig Walshe, believe this was a gross underestimate and most people would agree that the figure should have been closer to €1 billion.
But what is this dreaded disease and what impact does it have on cattle, sheep, pigs, goats and deer? Animals infected by foot and mouth stop eating, lose condition and go into a sharp decline and while it will not kill a healthy animal outright, it will make them unviable from a farming point of view.
The animals show signs of the disease when lesions appear on the mouth and feet and they stop eating. They become listless and lose condition.
While humans who are in contact with infected animals can contract a human form of the disease, again it is seldom fatal. There was one such case in Britain in 2001.
Scientists stress there is no danger to human health from eating infected meat but there is a risk to animals from infected meat and it is believed that waste food fed to pigs in a farm near Newcastle in the north of England, was the source of the outbreaks there in 2001.
Pigs at that farm infected sheep which were taken to a mart in Carlisle and these sheep were in contact with sheep which were taken into Northern Ireland for eventual slaughter in meat plants in the Republic.
The first outbreak on this island was at Meigh in Co Armagh and despite an almost total sealing off of the area, the disease made its way across the Border to the Cooley Peninsula to a farm at Proleek which led to the slaughter of every animal in the area.
Although the farmers in the area received just over €3 million in compensation for the loss of their animals, farming on the peninsula has never fully recovered from that outbreak.
The same can be said of the other outbreaks in the North of Ireland where the farmers involved never got back into full production, speeding up the flight from the land.
Meanwhile, in Britain where the government had failed to react quickly to the original outbreak in 2001, foot and mouth ran rampant through the farms and by the end of the year, 10 million animals had been slaughtered and the damage to the British economy was estimated to be in the region of €4 billion.
The burning pyres of animals which were to be seen up and down the British countryside caused severe damage to the food industry and contributed to a steep decline in meat production not to mention the damage these blazes caused to the environment.
However, there was a bonus for both the British and Irish authorities from the episode.
For the first time ever, proper governance was imposed on agriculture here and in Britain.
Here, for instance, it led to the tagging of sheep for the first time, the introduction of a movement-permit system for all animals and the licensing of all dealers and traders in cattle.
It can be said that foot and mouth led to an almost complete curbing of "the cowboys", the smugglers, the blue-meat dealers and the angel-dusters.
These new regulations - and the severe penalties which are attached to them - have meant a cleaner, more transparent and tightly controlled food industry which is the least hard-pressed consumers and decent farmers deserve.