PARIS (AP) _ A day after the United States banned meat imports from the European Union because of foot-and-mouth disease, nations from Europe to Asia on Wednesday piled more restrictions on an industry already reeling from the mad cow epidemic.
Australia, New Zealand, South Korea and Norway were the latest countries to announce bans on imports of livestock and meat products from the 15-nation European Union after the highly contagious disease was found Tuesday among cattle in northwestern France.
Japan, Estonia, Singapore and Latvia on Wednesday announced they were banning livestock products from France. Lithuania already banned meat and dairy products from the EU.
On Tuesday, hours after French officials confirmed the outbreak, the United States and Canada banned imports of livestock, fresh meat and dairy from the EU.
Richard Dunkle of USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service said Wednesday the entire EU was covered by the ban because of the rapid movement of people and animals among the countries of Europe.
The Rome-based U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization warned in a statement Wednesday that no country was safe from foot-and-mouth disease due to increased international trade and tourism.
But the EU called the bans excessive. Within Europe, only France and Britain have confirmed cases of foot-and-mouth disease. A case also has been reported in Argentina.
"It is not proportionate," EU spokeswoman Beate Gminder said Wednesday. "The only outbreak is in Britain and France," adding the affected areas were under strict surveillance to try to contain the disease.
French Agriculture Minister Jean Glavany said in an interview published Wednesday that France is "very exposed to risk" of more foot-and-mouth cases because of the 20,000 British sheep it imported in February that were scattered in 80 farms around the country.
The disease does not pose a danger to humans, but is ravaging herds in Britain, where at least 211 cases have been discovered. France's Feb. 29 decision to destroy British sheep, along with 30,000 French sheep, failed to keep the disease at bay.
France would consider, as a last resort, vaccinating livestock against the disease, Glavany told Le Parisien newspaper.
But for now, the key method of containing the disease is mass slaughter of animals with suspected infections, a move that will likely result in higher meat prices.
"Vaccination is a measure we don't exclude, in agreement with Brussels, if we can't master the spread of the disease," Glavany was quoted as saying. "But we're not there yet."
Vincent Carlier, a specialist at the Maison Alfort veterinary school outside Paris, where foot-and-mouth tests are analyzed, told French television that vaccinations are not full-proof and only work "against certain types of virus."
Tuesday's confirmation of the outbreak in France, the first in continental Europe since the disease was confirmed in Britain in February, has triggered a wide-ranging ban on imports of EU livestock and fresh meat by a multitude of nations.
Foot-and-mouth disease was diagnosed in cows on a farm in the Mayenne region of northwestern France, next door to a farm that had British sheep in its herd.
Six new cases of the infectious livestock ailment were discovered in Britain on Wednesday, bringing the total to 211.
With fresh outbreaks cropping up in the British countryside, farmers on Wednesday urged the government to postpone local elections scheduled for May 3. British Prime Minister Tony Blair had been expected to call a general election for the same day.
Britain has already slaughtered 120,000 animals and plans to destroy 50,000 more.
Experts say it's too early to assess the impact of foot-and-mouth disease on prices and supplies of meat. But farmers here have already been hard-hit by fears over mad cow disease, which is believed to be linked to a fatal brain wasting disease in humans. Since October, beef prices in Europe have fallen by about 27 percent.
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APTV 03-14-01 1025MST
