Foot And Mouth In Surrey

The BBC is reporting an outbreak of Foot and Mouth disease at a farm near Guildford in Surrey, news that will bring back memories of the fiasco surrounding the 2001 outbreak.

A 3km protection zone has been imposed around the farm and the movement of livestock in the UK has been stopped. The animals on the farm will be destroyed and investigations into the likely cause and path of the outbreak are underway.

In 2001 the mass closure of public rights of way across the UK effectively closed the outdoors for many walkers, climbers and mountain bikers and had a massive impact on the rural tourist economy generally. Gallingly, much research at the time suggested that the knee-jerk closure was unnecessary and that walkers were unlikely to spread the disease anyway.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown has apparently cancelled his holiday to take part in a meeting of the Government's Cobra emergency committee and let's hope both that this is an isolated incident which can be confined to the farm in question and that some serious lessons have been learned from the 2001 outbreak. Depressing stuff.

Full details at www.bbc.co.uk