Europe Fears Disease 'Disaster'The European Union's chief vets are preparing to discuss the foot-and-mouth crisis in Britain and consider whether any further action is necessary to prevent a possible spread of the disease to the continent.On Monday night, Britain assured its EU partners that livestock exports would not be resumed until the country was completely rid of the disease. The Agriculture Minister, Nick Brown, was reported to have received a sympathetic response when he discussed the crisis with his EU colleagues in Brussels. Britain's own worldwide ban on exports means that an EU embargo is virtually redundant, but the EU's chief vets are nonetheless likely to extend that ban for at least another week. Several European countries have introduced emergency measures to prevent the disease hitting their livestock. There are as yet no recorded cases of foot-and-mouth in mainland Europe, but hopes the crisis could be confined to the UK receded on Sunday with the confirmation that a British exporting farm had the disease. The head of the European Union's meat trading association, Jean-Luc Meriaux, said any transmission of foot and mouth to mainland Europe would be "an absolute disaster" for the European meat business, far worse even than mad cow disease. |
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