The foot-and-mouth outbreak in Britain spread further yesterday despite some encouraging signs for farmers.
As British government vets confirmed five new cases of the disease as far afield as Co Durham and in Herefordshire, bringing the total number of confirmed cases to 74, about 170 abattoirs and farmers had taken advantage of government licences allowing them to slaughter animals.
The scheme began in Scotland at the weekend and got under way in the rest of Britain yesterday in an effort to ensure that supermarkets do not run short of food and farmers unaffected by the foot-and-mouth outbreak do not lose vital business.
The National Farmers' Union warned, however, that the owners of some abattoirs were selling its members short.
The NFU said its members were being offered as little as £1.06 sterling per deadweight kg for beef and £2 per kg for lamb compared with an average of £1.70 and £2.65 per kg respectively prior to the foot-and-mouth outbreak.
In Dartmoor, where the first case of foot-and-mouth in the area was confirmed on remote Duchy of Cornwall land at the weekend and a second suspected outbreak was being investigated, local farmers urged that troops be called in to establish a five-mile radius exclusion zone.
The NFU described the confirmed outbreak as "the nightmare scenario" because up to 46,000 animals roam free on Dartmoor and they are susceptible to contamination by wild animals, such as foxes and hedgehogs, which also roam freely across the moor.
But farmers were also fearful because if the outbreak is unconnected to other cases in Devon, it could lead to the widespread culling of wild livestock on the moor.
As Ministry of Agriculture vets continued their investigation into the Dartmoor outbreak the department's Devon veterinary manager, Mr Ben Bennett, said livestock outside Dunna Bridge farm, the holding owned by the Prince of Wales on Dartmoor, was, as yet, unaffected. However, he said vets were investigating a potential link between the Dunna Bridge outbreak and other cases more than 20 miles away, raising the possibility that the Dartmoor outbreak was carried on the wind.
The Prince of Wales yesterday described the foot-and-mouth outbreak as a "hideous business" and said he feared some farmers might be driven to commit suicide because of the crisis.
Speaking as he visited the Swaminarayan Hindu Temple in northwest London, the prince urged people in the rural community to talk to each other and support each other through the current difficulties facing the industry.