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EU urges traces to beat foot-and-mouth


Slaughtered carcasses are set on fire

BRUSSELS, Belgium -- The European Union has urged member states to trace livestock shipments from Britain to prevent foot-and-mouth disease spreading across Europe.

Meanwhile on Monday, the task of burning the carcasses of hundreds of slaughtered animals continued as the highly infectious animal virus caused havoc to Britain's farming industry.

At a briefing on Monday in Brussels, the European Commission's health and consumer spokeswoman, Beate Gminder, said the EU was "satisfied with measures taken" by British authorities to stamp out the disease and prevent its spread throughout the continent.

But she added that it was vital that "the member states concerned, including France, should undertake tracing of all animals involved in transport from the UK in the last three weeks."

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Later, the UK's Agriculture Minister Nick Brown was scheduled to meet his EU counterparts to advise them of the current situation, which worsened on Monday after four more cases of the disease were confirmed.

It brings to 11 the official confirmed cases since the outbreak was first diagnosed a week ago.

Brown, who is expected to make a statement to the House of Commons about the outbreak before flying to Brussels, said the latest discoveries were a "serious development."

"There could be other cases out there, we don't know. It will be discovered over the next few days," he said.

Ben Gill, president of the UK National Farmers' Union, said: "Our hopes that the disease could be contained ... have been horribly shattered."

So far, at least 2,000 animals have been destroyed since the outbreak was first detected in Essex, south-east England.

Although the EU banned all British meat imports last Wednesday, Brown has acknowledged there is a risk that infected sheep could already have been exported.

On Monday, much of the British press carried front-page pictures of animal carcasses being burnt on all-night funeral pyres at farms in Northumberland and Essex.

At one farm -- Burnside, in Heddon-on-the-Wall, Northumberland, believed to be the source of the outbreak -- Ministry of Agriculture officials began to burn more than 800 slaughtered pig carcasses at the weekend.

They were doused in oil and diesel and placed on top of 250 railway sleepers, 75 tonnes of coal and lorry-loads of straw, then ignited.

Flames stretched along a 130-metre long ditch that was built for the incineration.

The fire was expected to burn for up to two days and the ashes will later be buried at Burnside Farm.

Meanwhile, in the Netherlands, more than 3,000 sheep, cattle, pigs and deer were slaughtered over the weekend as a preventive measure.

Officials said all the animals had been imported animals from Britain. No foot-and-mouth cases have been detected in the Netherlands.

Belgium imposed a ban on Saturday on all transport of sheep and goats, while the authorities in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia have begun culling farm animals of British.

The slaughter was carried out at one farm on Sunday and was planned for Monday at the other, state Environment and Agriculture Minister Baerbel Hoehn told Deutschland Radio.

According to statements, animals from Britain were shipped to North Rhine-Westphalia in January. Some of them came from a farm afflicted with the highly-contagious disease.

The scenes in Britain were reminiscent of those in 1967 when a foot-and-mouth epidemic continued for months and forced the slaughter of nearly half a million animals.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.