This entry was posted on
Friday, August 3rd, 2007 at
9:46 pm and is filed
under Updates.

Animals on a farm in Elstead (for everyone else in the country, that’s ‘near Guildford’) have tested positive for foot and mouth disease.

Elstead is about 6 miles from here… and please stop looking at me like that.

UPDATE (11:42pm) – Well, there’s a bloody tragedy… Iain Dale missed out on a Newsnight appearance as a result. Diddums.

[I’d say something about old cows here, but there are rules.]

UPDATE (4 Aug) – Morning. We’re not the happiest village going, but things are civilised and safely squared away so far. Oh, and despite what the earlier Surrey Ad article might have suggested, the outbreak was not in Elstead, but in Normandy… which is about 6 miles from here.

UPDATE – The Cranleigh Show is still going ahead… minus the livestock (but including horses).

UPDATE (5 Aug) – Finally, some much-needed assistance… for those who are struggling to make this Gordon Brown’s fault:

Independent – Countryside in crisis: Outbreak linked to leak from foot and mouth laboratory: The outbreak of foot and mouth disease that was yesterday devastating the British livestock industry for a second time in a decade seems to have been a spectacular “own goal” by the animal health industry. Last night, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said that the strain of foot and mouth disease found on a farm in southern England was identical to one used at a nearby laboratory. This raised the prospect of the outbreak being caused by a leak from one of the facilities most concerned with trying to defeat the disease. The only two laboratories licensed in this country to work with live foot and mouth disease virus are at Pirbright, Surrey, within three miles of the infected farm.

UPDATE (6 Aug) – Of course, only a hardened cynic would mention lessons learned during the recent flooding…

BBC – Livestock missing as show goes on: With no cattle, sheep or pigs making themselves heard around the showground, the secretary of the 2007 Cranleigh Show, in Surrey, said it had been a “very quiet” affair this year… Conservative leader David Cameron was attending the event alongside Tory MP Anne Milton, whose Guildford constituency covers Cranleigh.