PESTILENCE WATCH:Experts search UK lab for foot-and-mouth

PIRBRIGHT,England-Biosafety experts scoured a high-security animal laboratory in rural England Sunday to determine how a strain of the foot-and-mouth virus may have escaped from a facility dedicated to eliminating the devastating animal disease.Officials increasingly suspect that the lab-home to a government research center and a company that makes foot-and-mouth vaccine-was the source of the outbreak on a nearby farm.That has raised hopes that the disease was not spread by other animals and could be contained.The particular strain of the highly infectious disease was identical to one used at the lab and had not recently been seen in live animals,the agriculture department said.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown said he was hopeful that a potentially disastrous livestock epidemic could be averted."The first thing,having identified a possible source of the disease,we must now look at the transmission mechanism,"Brown said,adding that the government has not ruled out other sources.Britain has banned exports of livestock,meat and milk and halted the movement of cattle,sheep,goats and pigs nationwide to prevent the spread of the virus.The US and Japan immediately banned British pigs and pork products.The case is the first in Britain since 2001,when carcasses of the 7 million culled cattle were burned on huge pyres that dotted the countryside.The farming industry was devastated and rural tourism was badly hit.The affected farm is about 4 miles away from the lab,which is shared by the government's Institute for Animal Health and a private pharmaceutical company,Merial Animal Health,the British arm of Duluth, Ga.-based Merial Ltd...
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