UK foot-and-mouth epidemic 'likely to last several months'

The foot-and-mouth epidemic is likely to persist for several months, British Agriculture Minister Nick Brown has warned.

It will take at least three months to tackle residual infectivity before Britain gets its disease-free status back, he said.

As the confirmed cases in Britain and Northern Ireland continued a steady rise to 312, Chief Vet Jim Scudamore says the outbreak is already far more severe than that in 1967.

"Just three weeks into this outbreak we are already looking at 278,000 animals affected. In the six months the 1967 outbreak lasted, only 400,000 animals were affected, which shows the severity of this," he said.

National Farmers' Union President Ben Gill said: "I think the down-time, down-stream consequences of this disease will mean that there will be movement restrictions on livestock, certainly on sheep, for the foreseeable future, certainly the rest of this year.

"We clearly have to take every effort to contain the spread, particularly in Cumbria."

Deputy agriculture minister Joyce Quin visited Cumbrian farmers, ahead of Mr Scudamore's visit to the region, in a bid to quell their fears over the controversial mass cull of healthy animals in a bid to halt the spread of the disease.