The French Agriculture ministry has announced that a second outbreak of foot and mouth disease has been discovered in France's Seine-et-Marne region east of Paris. The first outbreak was discovered in the western department of Mayenne on 13 March. The ministry said that all the animals would be slaughtered and their carcasses destroyed.
Britain's farming industry was today warned to brace itself for a steep rise in the number of foot and mouth cases - to 70 a day over the next two weeks, with a projection of more than 4,000 cases by June. The report, compiled for the Ministry of Agriculture by disease specialists, said that there was still a need for further drastic action to bring the epidemic under control. Thirty cases were confirmed today. Sixteen cases in Cumbria, six in Dumfries & Galloway, six in Herefordshire, and one case in Monmouthshire and West Yorkshire. This brings the total confirmed cases in Britain to 509.
In the North, the Agriculture Minister, Bríd Rodgers, has put additional border controls in place. Ms Rodgers warned that its impossible to overstate the seriousness of the outbreak in Louth as it showed it was now possible that there was an unidentified source of the disease separate to the case in South Armagh. Extra troops and Gardaí have been drafted in to patrol the foot and mouth exclusion zone in North County Louth, as officials continue the slaughter of livestock in the 1km exclusion zone. Inspectors from the Department of Agriculture have been sent to all border crossings and the spraying of North-bound vehicles has begun.
