Britain braced itself yesterday for food shortages at supermarkets, as an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in pigs spread and the government imposed a countrywide ban on all movement of farm animals.
The week-long ban from Friday closed down all British livestock markets and abattoirs, prohibited hunting and also halted imports of live animals.
The worst fears of government vets were confirmed as the number of sites where foot-and-mouth (FMD) has been identified rose to six.
It also emerged that at one farm in the northeast the infection had been present for "two to three weeks" -- longer than previously thought and enough time for it to have spread the length and breadth of the country.
Some of the major supermarket chains warned that the outbreak and the ban on transporting animals could lead to a shortage of food on their shelves but urged shoppers not to panic buy.
Agriculture minister Nick Brown appealed to consumers: "Don't alter your shopping patterns."
Unveiling the new ban on animal transportation, Brown said: "The purpose is to prevent the spread of foot-and-mouth disease while we are trying to extinguish it.
"The disease appears to have been present for two to three weeks," Brown added. "The Chief Veterinary Officer has advised me that there is a real risk that FMD could appear anywhere in the UK."
He also urged the public not to visit farms with livestock.
Brown also said he had not ruled out the mass slaughter of all livestock within a set distance of farms where outbreaks have taken place.
But he added that Britain's chief vet was not in favor of such a step at the moment.
Cattle and pigs were slaughtered on Friday at all six locations with confirmed cases of FMD -- which is harmless to humans but causes illness in hooved animals like sheep, pigs and cows.
As questions started to be asked about who was to blame for the outbreak and why it had taken so long to detect the virus, agriculture ministry officials said they believed a farm in the northeast, at Heddon-on-the-wall, Northumberland, was the source of the outbreak.
An agriculture ministry spokeswoman said the farm was visited by state veterinary officials on Dec. 22 and Jan. 24 after an anonymous complaint about animal welfare.
But the visit produced no grounds for prosecution and the pigs were "fit and healthy," although the farmer was given advice on upkeep and conditions.
The pig farmer believed to be at the center of the outbreak, Bobby Waugh, 55, said in a statement: "I honestly hadn't seen anything wrong with any of my pigs in the last few weeks. How could I report something I didn't see?"
Agriculture ministry staff were investigating a further 600 farms which had also supplied livestock to the slaughter house at Little Warley, southeast England, where FMD was first discovered earlier this week.
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