Farming crisis as English Government bans meat exports

Government officials are trying to discover the source of the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease threatening to cripple Britain's farming industry.

All exports of live animals, meat and dairy products have been banned by the Government following the first outbreak of the disease for 20 years.

Junior agriculture minister Baroness Hayman announced the ban in the House of Lords following further revelations about the extent of the crisis.

The Government said a total of 300 pigs and 60 cattle had been killed at an Essex slaughter house - Cheale Meats in Little Warley, south of Brentwood - and an adjacent farm owned by the same family.

Officials said none of the animals involved had been imported into Britain.

The abattoir is ringed by a 10-mile exclusion zone, while the two farms from which the animals were delivered last Friday - one in Great Horwood, Buckinghamshire, and the other in Freshwater Bay in the Isle of Wight - are under five-mile exclusion orders banning the transport in and out of the restricted areas.

The government said a fourth farm, in Yorkshire, had been placed under similar restrictions after one of the infected pigs was discovered to have been delivered to the slaughter house from a market in Selby.

Restrictions were also placed around a farm near Stroud, Gloucestershire, following another "suspected" outbreak of foot-and-mouth.

Agriculture Minister Nick Brown said all farmers who had no choice but to slaughter livestock affected by the disease would be compensated at the full market value for each animal.

The National Farmers' Union said the temporary ban on exports would be "devastating" for its members but that it was a "necessary evil" to control the disease.