Strategy to halt farm virus in disarray

The British Government's attempts to bring a halt to the foot-­and-mouth epidemic were in disarray last night after the Minister of Agriculture admitted that he was "struggling" to achieve crucial slaughter targets to stem the spread of the disease.

Nick Brown is coming under fresh pressure to consider vaccinating livestock after he admitted that the Government was failing to stick to its own deadlines for slaughtering livestock because of the sheer number of animals affected.

His comments punctured the mood of optimism that has prevailed since Wednesday when David King, the Government's chief scientific adviser, suggested that the epidemic may have "passed the worst".

Fears that the Government is losing its grip on the emergency were shared by angry farmers and vets who rounded on ministers and accused them of "dithering" in their handling of the crisis.

Joyce Quin, Mr Brown's deputy, was confronted on an official visit by about 20 vets, currently working for the Ministry for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, who said the Government's failure to make swift decisions was making the epidemic worse.

"This is not the euro, we can't wait and see," one vet told the minister on a visit to the disease control centre in Kenton Bar, Newcastle upon Tyne.

Yesterday Chris Smith, the Culture Secretary, brought more embarrassment on the Government when he admitted that it had been mistaken in advising people to stay away from the countryside as the epidemic took hold.

He said that the Government was incorrect to issue advice to walkers, tourists and city dwellers not to visit rural attractions. What I think a lot of people, however, quite legitimately did in those early days of the epidemic was to think the best possible thing was to stay out of the countryside," Mr Smith said in an interview on BBC Radio 4.

"It's something which I think everyone though at that stage and we all got it wrong because the effect on the rural economy of people staying away has indeed been devastating. The best possible thing we can do is get the visitors coming back."

Ministers were bracing themselves yesterday for gloomy reports from the tourist industry which is facing one of its worst Easter weekends in living memory.

As a group of leading scientists advised ministers that a third of British farms could be infected by foot-and-mouth disease, farmers accused ministers of failing to meet their own target of culling animals in the vicinity of an outbreak within 48 hours.

Scientists from Imperial College London published a mathematical model yesterday showing that the Government's best chance of stopping the epidemic spreading was to stick to a policy of culling infected animals within 24 hours and "ring-culling" animals on neighbouring farms within 48 hours of detection.

- INDEPENDENT