LONDON — Funeral pyres of farm animals paint hellish landscapes in North Yorkshire, Wales and Devon. Scotland is buried by snowstorms. A freak train wreck leaves at least 13 dead and 70 injured on the Newcastle-to-London line.
Britain is feeling besieged.
The steady march of foot-and-mouth disease across the length and breadth of Britain is broadcast on the news: six more outbreaks Wednesday. No, this just in--two more confirmed Wednesday night. Plus, the first case in Northern Ireland.
"It is like a bad dream," Essex farmer John Morley said after the last of his 500 pigs had been slaughtered.
Morley, 45, escaped the "mad cow" disease of the last decade by raising pigs instead of cattle. He avoided an outbreak of swine fever last year, and his hillside Green Acres farm stood above the flood waters that inundated his neighbor's home this winter for the first time in a quarter of a century.
But the first mass outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in more than 30 years has wiped him out. His farm has been emptied and hosed down with disinfectant.
"It was one of those old diseases we thought would never return," he said.
The fast-spreading virus affects cloven-footed animals such as cattle, pigs, sheep and goats but rarely infects humans. It can be carried on boots, clothing, cars and wind, transmitted from one animal to another or contracted through contaminated feed--an unsettling fact for Northumberland residents who learned that a local farmer's infected pigs were fed on swill made from leftover school dinners.
In its uphill battle to stop the spread of the disease, the government has declared the countryside off-limits to city dwellers and banned the movement of farm animals for two weeks, with some exceptions that are to be overseen by the army. In some rural areas, children have been kept home from school.
National parks and public footpaths are closed, with fines of up to $7,200 for violators. Horse racing has been suspended for a week, and a big rugby match between Wales and Ireland scheduled for Saturday was canceled. At least one zoo has closed its doors.
Last week's talk that Prime Minister Tony Blair--riding high in polls--might call national elections for as early as April has evaporated in the smoke of the bonfires for slaughtered animals. Now political pundits are talking about a vote possibly in the autumn, with the bad news seeming to fall from above.
