Britain expects no new cases of foot and mouth

LONDON - Britain does not expect any new cases of foot and mouth, but another major livestock disease, bluetongue, is continuing to spread, the country's deputy chief veterinarian officer Fred Landeg said on Friday.

"We hope that we will not discover any further new cases (of foot and mouth disease)," Landeg told a news conference.

He said a government scientific report issued on Friday showed the foot and mouth outbreak was "most likely to remain small and not become geographically extensive".

Eight farms in Surrey, southern England, had been infected with foot and mouth. Landeg said the risk that the diseases could spread outside a surveillance zone surrounding those farms was very low.

Landeg said, however, that new cases were still emerging of bluetongue disease.

Britain's first ever case of bluetongue was reported in Suffolk, eastern England, on Sept. 22. Landeg confirmed last Friday an outbreak of the disease in Britain after several subsequent cases.

He said 25 farms in Suffolk and the neighbouring county of Essex had been infected with bluetongue as of Thursday.

But the spread of the disease should slow as temperatures drop, he said. The disease is carried by midges.

"Low temperatures mean that further cases should diminish. We should see a halt to new cases in the winter," he said.

Landeg noted that in northern European countries such as Belgium, a mild winter meant that the disease had re-emerged this summer.

Livestock movement controls had been imposed to try to control the spread of bluetongue and Landeg said these would remain in force at least until next summer.

"Even if we were lucky enough to have a long hard winter we would still have to demonstrate there was no virus circulating," he said.

The bluetongue virus causes fever and mouth ulcers and in some cases turns an animal's tongue blue. It can be highly dangerous to sheep and cows, although it does not affect humans.

Animals with bluetongue are not culled and in many cases recover and have productive lives, Landeg said.