The European Union will officially ban exports of livestock and related products from mainland Britain on Monday in the wake of the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in the country.
"The main element will be the establishment of a high-risk area from which cattle, sheep and goats cannot be exported," Philip Tod, spokesman for EU Health Commissioner Markos Kyrpianou, told a daily news briefing.
"Nor can fresh meat and milk be exported," he added.
Tod said the European Commission, in agreement with British authorities, would define the whole of Britain, excluding Northern Ireland, as a "high-risk area" where the ban applies, instead of a limited area around the outbreak site as originally planned by the Commission.
"That means live animals and milk products will not be able to be dispatched from Great Britain," the mainland part of Britain, to other EU countries, he said.
The formal decision of the ban, along with a package of emergency measures, is expected to be announced later Monday, before it is reviewed by EU veterinary experts at their meeting Wednesday.
The Commission had made it clear a ban would be in place after the British government reported that some 60 animals at a farm near Guildford, Surrey, in southern England, were tested positive Thursday for the foot-and-mouth disease, a highly contagious disease of domestic and wild cloven-hoofed animals.
All EU countries had reportedly stopped importing cloven-hoofed animals and related products from Britain since Saturday, and the United States and Japan have decided to follow suit.
The latest outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease stoked fears of reliving the 2001 catastrophe, which caused Britain economic losses of 8 billion pounds (about 16 billion U.S. dollars), while devastating British farming and tourism industries and causing social chaos.
Source: Xinhua
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