Slaughterman awaits human foot-and-mouth tests

A slaughterman who may have contracted foot-and-mouth disease was today awaiting the outcome of tests to see if he has the illness.

The symptoms in humans are mouth ulcers, temperature and tingling in the feet and hands.

If the tests prove positive, the man, who was employed to dispose of carcasses in north Cumbria, will become only the second man in the UK to have contracted the disease.

A spokesman for North Cumbria Health Authority stressed the slaughterman’s condition was ‘‘giving no cause for concern’’.

News of the suspected human foot-and-mouth case came as the British Government signalled it was on the verge of abandoning its proposed vaccination policy in the areas worst affected by the disease.

Agriculture Minister Nick Brown admitted that in the light of persistent resistance from farmers and industry, coupled with growing optimism that the culling policy is containing the virus, that a programme of vaccination was now looking less likely.

‘‘The case for vaccination recedes as the number of daily cases declines,’’ he said.

The average number of daily cases is now 16 compared with 43 just over two weeks ago.

The total last night was 1,448 cases in Britain and four in Northern Ireland.

Environment Minister Michael Meacher expressed surprise at the suspected case of the human variant of foot-and-mouth.

‘‘This would be extremely unlikely but it is, apparently, possible. I think we just have to wait and get the full and complete assessment from the Department of Health,’’ he said.

Dr Angus Nichol, director of the communicable disease surveillance at the Public Health Laboratory Service, disclosed that there had been other suspected cases but all had proved negative.

‘‘I must stress that the case that is being investigated with our laboratories is only a possible case. Of the previous people who thought they might have the disease all of them came up negative,’’ he added.

‘‘So if I was a betting man I would think this one would be negative as well.

‘‘This generally is a very mild disease in human beings and it is only very, very rarely that it transmits to human beings at all.’’

The only case of foot-and-mouth disease among humans in the UK was reported in 1966 in Northumberland.

Bobby Brewis, 34, a farm machinery salesman living on a farm with his brother in the hamlet of Yetlington, was reported to have had only ‘‘indirect’’ contact with livestock.