Archived News

6th September 2007
Tomorrow there should be an official announcement of how Foot and Mouth Disease escaped from the Pirbright Laboratory or Merial site.

I have given some thought to the siting of the Pirbright laboratories and the fields in which two herds had infected animals. If the standing flood water at the Pirbright site was sucked up into a tanker and taken away (presumably no one would have expected that the FMD virus was present in the standing water) and pumped out at a site close to the Pride herd, the water carrying the FMD virus could easily have seeped into the stream from which the cattle drank. Could this explain why the entire Pride herd were carrying the virus and showing clinical symptons having all contracted the virus from the water at the same time?<

The stream then flows down to our field in which John Gunner's cattle were grazing and drinking from the same stream.

I am not convinced at the moment, that a vehicle passing on a nearby road could have spread the virus to the Pride herd. If this were the case, one or two animals might catch the virus on the wind and then there would be a gradual infection of the group over a matter of days so the farmer would not have found all the cattle with clinical symptons.

Back