Not for the first time this year, the foot-and-mouth epidemic in Britain has shown its terrible unpredictability. To some experts we may be experiencing the final throes of Europe's worst outbreak of the disease in recent years, but to many others it may soon prove to be quite the opposite. There is sufficient evidence to suggest extreme caution should be adopted by the Government. A sense of alert among farmers and the public has to be re-established.
Port controls on the Irish Sea continue to be effective, but border checks - understandably, given the disease-free status of Northern Ireland in recent months - have been significantly more relaxed. Unauthorised livestock movements across the border are believed to have led to the one outbreak in the Republic, and there is every indication we are most vulnerable from that source. Renewed vigilance is essential in light of events in Britain and the remarkable persistence of the particular strain of the virus there. In April, bold predictions were made that foot-and-mouth would be gone from the British countryside within two months. What has happened in the meantime is disturbing, to put it mildly, with potentially serious implications for an Irish economy, more vulnerable now than earlier this year when the disease hit Northern Ireland and the Cooley Peninsula. After some temporary blips, the UK epidemic has resumed its rise, and now approaches the 2,000 outbreak mark.
What is occurring in Northumberland - where three new cases were confirmed yesterday - is a disease "hotspot" and clusters are arising elsewhere. When conditions that facilitate the spread of the disease return during the autumn, the Republic may find it very difficult to keep it out. The British government seems finally to have put in place the biosecurity measures needed to curb the spread. It has been less successful in tracking sources of infection. Ominously, long gaps between new cases, relaxation of controls and even the British government's announcement of several inquiries have contributed to the feeling that the crisis was all but over. Irish farmers and the Irish economy can no longer afford to harbour similarly smug assumptions.