British authorities hunting the source of an outbreak of infectious foot and mouth disease focused their investigation yesterday on two research labs located just kilometers from where a herd of cattle was infected.
While there was no confirmation the research sites were the source of the infection, both high-security labs -- one run by the government's Institute for Animal Health and the other by a pharmaceutical company called Merial -- were sealed off and placed within a 10km exclusion zone.
Both laboratories handle a variety of strains of foot and mouth, conducting research into the virus and developing vaccines against it, and other animal diseases.
But Member of Parliament Hilary Benn said it was too early to say whether the site of the two labs -- known as the Pirbright facility -- was definitely the source of the virus, which was found to have infected a herd of about 60 cattle at a farm 5km away.
"This is a promising lead but we do not know for sure," Benn, who cut short his family holiday in Italy to return to Britain when the outbreak was confirmed late on Friday, told BBC News 24 television.
"That's why we are being prudent and while we are doing this work it's very, very important that people continue to be observant, that farmers look at their stock and if they have any suspicions they report them as quickly as possible," he said.
Merial, one of the world's leading animal health firms with sales last year of US$2.2 billion, is jointly owned by US drugmaker Merck & Co and France's Sanofi-Aventis SA.
Attention focused on the labs as the possible source of the infection after Defra, Britain's department for agriculture, said the strain of foot and mouth confirmed in 60 head of cattle on Friday was not one recently found in animals.
In fact, it was a strain of the virus isolated nearly 40 years ago by British biological researchers, it said.
The UK's chief veterinarian, Debby Reynolds, ordered an "urgent review into biosecurity arrangements" at both sites, although Defra also emphasized that "all potential sources" of the virus were still being investigated.
The infected animals, found on a farm in Surrey, southwest of London, were isolated, culled and taken away for burial on Saturday. A nearby herd was also culled as a precaution.
"The foot and mouth strain found in Surrey is not one currently known to be recently found in animals," the agriculture department said in a statement.
"It is most similar to strains used in international diagnostic laboratories and in vaccine production," it said.
"The present indications are that this strain is a 01 BFS67-like virus, isolated in the 1967 foot and mouth disease outbreak in Great Britain.
"Immediate action is being taken with an investigation led by the Health and Safety Executive at the Institute for Animal Health and Merial."
If it is found that the cattle were infected by a leak from the Pirbright laboratories, it may reassure Britain's farming community, still reeling from a devastating food and mouth outbreak in 2001, that the disease can be isolated.
However, it will cause consternation in the scientific community that a highly infectious pathogen, carried on the wind, can escape from a high-security laboratory.
The latest outbreak comes six years after a foot and mouth crisis that devastated British farming, with more than 6 million animals culled and countrywide tourism affected, at a total cost estimated at ?8.5 billion (US$17 billion).
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS