A suspected case of foot and mouth disease is being investigated in Germany. Officials in the northern state of Lower Saxony said that blood samples from a pig farm had been sent for analysis; piglets had been imported from the Netherlands four weeks ago, but were not thought to be from the area where the disease broke out yesterday.
The Dutch Ministry of Agriculture has said that it believes that the source of the outbreak of foot and mouth disease in the Netherlands is the Mayenne region of France. A consignment of Irish veal calves used the district of La Baroche-Gondouin in the Departement of Mayenne as a staging area en rout to the Netherlands on 23 February. It is believed that the cattle came into contact with infected sheep from the UK in Mayenne, and contracted the disease there. The cattle were then taken to the farm at Oene, where the first Dutch outbreak was discovered on Tuesday. Seventy-five cattle stayed at Oene, 75 were transported to a nearby farm at Olst and a further 80 were taken to a third farm. Animals at all three locations tested positive for foot and mouth.
The Dutch Ministry of Agriculture said that it does not believe that the cattle had the disease when they left Ireland, but contracted it in France. The Dutch are understood to be angry that the French government did not notify them until yesterday evening that a consignment of cattle destined for the Netherlands used the Mayenne region as a staging post during their journey to the Netherlands during the diseases infective period.
The Agriculture Ministry last night announced the discovery of a third case of foot and mouth disease in the country. The farm on which the new case was discovered is situated between the other two farms where the disease was earlier identified. The infected farms are all within 30 miles of the German border.
Yesterday, the EU banned all exports of livestock from the Netherlands. The sale of untreated milk and meat products from the four Dutch provinces around the infected farm has also been outlawed. The Dutch Agriculture Ministry has initiated a vaccination campaign of all animals in the surrounding areas. Meanwhile, the results of tests from two more suspect cases in the south of the country are to be made known on Friday.
In a separate development, a leading epidemiologist has predicted that Britain's foot and mouth outbreak will not peak until May at the earliest and will not be eliminated until at least August. Professor Roy Anderson, who was hired by the British Ministry of Agriculture to carry out a study of the current outbreak, has also predicted that it will be worse than the 1967 crisis. Professor Anderson's assessment of the likely pattern of the disease will make grim reading for the British government which commissioned it.
He says that changes in farming practices and increased movements of livestock over recent decades meant that this outbreak was an epidemic waiting to happen. He also states clearly that, contrary to statements from Britain's Agriculture Minister, Nick Brown, the outbreak is not under control. Roy Anderson's best case scenario is that if the controversial pre-emptive cull is applied vigorously now, it may be possible to turn the epidemic around in a couple of months. That would mean it would be early May before a decline could be expected. After that, it would take at least until late summer before the disease could be eliminated.
Dutch officials announced six new suspected cases today. The culling of at least 18,000 animals got underway in an attempt to prevent the spread of the disease in the Netherlands. Three outbreaks have been confirmed so far in Olst, Oene, and Welsum, three neighbouring towns in the eastern province of Gelderland. The farmers at Welsum and Oene are brothers.
Dutch Agriculture Minister Laurens-Jan Brinkhorst said that animals at six other farms were suspect. Two of them are in Gelderland province, including one in Oosterwolde, three in the southern area of Brabant, in Maren-Kessel, Herpen and Sprang-Cappelle, and one at Beesd, in the centre of the country.
The Dutch Government has re-introduced a ban on exports and imports of animals susceptible to foot and mouth and has forbidden the movement of animals inside the country. Over 600 sheep, cows and pigs were destroyed over the first weekend in March in an effort to keep the disease out of Holland. Some of the animals had been imported from Britain.
Italy put hundreds of sheep of French origin under quarantine on 22 March after slaughtering one of the animals. The slaughtered animal, which was in a herd of 332 animals that arrived at a farm near Pisa in the central Tuscany region from the French town of Montreuil, showed signs of foot-and-mouth disease. Italy has had no confirmed cases of the disease so far.
Tissue samples from the suspect animals were sent to a veterinary institute at Brescia in northern Italy for analysis. Tests that were carried out on a herd of sheep suspected of being infected with the virus that causes FMD last week proved negative. The 400 sheep were slaughtered as a precautionary measure.
