FROM the moment a country is struck by foot and mouth disease, officials have just hours to react to save farmer’s livelihoods and avoid millions of animals being slaughtered. That’s the message rammed home by the most detailed examination yet of the foot and mouth epidemic that paralysed Britain last year.
Researchers who reconstructed the epidemic in forensic detail estimate that the number of infected farms would have been cut by 60 per cent, from 2026 to 793, if the government had banned animal movements immediately the disease was confirmed instead of three days later.
“Half the epidemic was seeded over those three days,” says lead…
