The British Government has launched a worldwide appeal for vets to help in the mass cull of animals to prevent the spread of foot and mouth disease. The British Agriculture Minister Nick Brown said that more vets are needed to contain the disease and speed up the disposal process. The virus has now spread to the Lake District, where park managers fear that it could wipe out the area's farming and tourism industries. There are now 633 cases of foot and mouth in the UK after 27 more were confirmed today.
The British Army has started filling a mass burial site today with slaughtered sheep. An airfield in Cumbria was transformed in order to facilitate the burial of more than 500,000 carcasses. Facilities are to be established to allow slaughtering to take place at the site. The Emergency Planning Group is assessing other locations for the burial of more condemned animals.
Diggers have extracted thousands of tons of earth to construct the first of several burial trenches which is now up to 90 metres long, five metres wide and four metres deep. The construction work, being overseen by the Army, is taking place at the former Great Orton airfield near Carlisle where 1,200 dead sheep are to be removed from sealed wagons and emptied into the enormous livestock grave.
In a separate development, Russia has banned the import of meat and dairy products from the European Union due to the foot and mouth outbreaks. Agriculture Minister Alexei Gordeyev said that the 21-day embargo also affected eastern Europe and the three former Soviet Baltic States. Russia imports one third of its meat consumption – about two million tonnes of meat per year.
