LIVESTOCK PROBLEMS The recent news that the foot and mouth
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epidemic has not been contained as had been hoped has led me to wonder just how on earth this current disaster will ever be fully controlled.
We are told that the disease has a two-week incubation period and that with the ban on livestock movements this should have contained the spread of foot and mouth. This has apparently failed due to the disease being found in sheep, in which the symptoms are not easy to detect in the early stages. Thus, diseased animals have been wandering around for days on end one assumes, infecting other animals and no doubt spreading the virus to nearby farms by means of airborne germs.
If this is the case then it could be months before we can safely say that all is clear.
I wonder how long the public will be sympathetic to the farmers' cause and stay out of the countryside and off the footpaths.
Once the novelty of the exclusion wears off I can see ramblers and dog walkers simply ignoring the signs and taped-off footpaths.
Until now very little has been said in the media about the effect all this is having on livestock hauliers.
This is a bleak time for road haulage already without the addition of yet another problem to running businesses. A couple of weeks' loss of earnings is one thing, a couple of months will mean the end for more than a few hauliers. Martin Davey, Gillingham, Kent.