The British government has introduced emergency controls banning the export of live animals, meat, milk and other animal products after an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in Essex.
The first cases of the disease in Britain in 20 years were discovered on Monday at an abattoir, Cheale Meats, near Brentwood, Essex. The director of the abattoir, Mr Paul Cheale, contacted officials from the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food when he observed that 27 pigs brought in for slaughter last Friday were showing signs of the disease and a vet from the State Veterinary Service confirmed the outbreak. The pigs were immediately destroyed.
Some 720 pigs were slaughtered as planned on Monday and when the disease was confirmed a further 284 pigs were destroyed.
The disease was also confirmed among animals at Old England farm, which is adjacent to the abattoir and is owned by the same family.
The department has imposed a five-mile exclusion zone around the properties, banning the movement of animals in and out of the zone. State vets are also tracing the source of pigs and other animals delivered to the Essex abattoir from hundreds of farms across Britain and Northern Ireland.
A temporary ban on the export of live animals, meat, milk and other animal products from the county of Essex has also been introduced.
Exclusion zones have been placed around three farms that sent the pigs to the abattoir - one in Great Horwood, Buckinghamshire, one in Yorkshire and the third near Freshwater Bay on the Isle of Wight. An exclusion zone has also been imposed around a farm in Gloucestershire where an outbreak of the disease is suspected.
As livestock farmers warned they faced losses of up to £11 million sterling each week due to the outbreak, the president of the National Farmers' Union, Mr Ben Gill, said the disease could prove "disastrous" for the industry.
The Agriculture Minister, Mr Nick Brown, said the outbreak of the disease did not pose any risk to human health. As he drafted in extra resources to help undertake hundreds of farm visits in the effort to locate and ultimately exterminate the source of the outbreak, Mr Brown assured farmers the government would compensate them at full price for any animals destroyed.
The Food Standards Agency said there were no implications for the human food chain and the Consumers' Association said the outbreak did not pose a risk for food safety.
The Agriculture Minister in the Lords, Baroness Hayman, announced the temporary controls in the House of Lords and warned farmers to be vigilant for signs of the disease among their animals.