Foot and Mouth Outbreak Traced to Lab

Vaccine may have leaked and spread to nearby farm
By Sam Biddle,  Newser Staff
Posted Aug 5, 2007 11:13 AM CDT
Foot and Mouth Outbreak Traced to Lab
A British police officer watches a truck believed to be transporting the carcasses of the slaughtered cows from a cattle farm, where an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease was diagnosed Friday, near Guildford, England, about 50 kilometers (30 miles) south of London, Saturday, Aug. 4, 2007. The case...   (Associated Press)

An English research lab is the likely source of a recent outbreak of foot and mouth disease, the Guardian reports. British government officials believe a batch of experimental vaccine leaked and spread to a nearby farm. Scientists were tipped to the possible leak by the fact that the strain of the virus is not one that occurs naturally, but is a vaccine strain.

The company is just three miles from the farm where the outbreak occurred.
A 10km "surveillance zone" has been established around the farm, to avoid a reprise of the catastrophic foot and mouth breakout in 2001 that cost the nation billions. (More agriculture stories.)

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