Britain calls in 007 in foot-and-mouth fight

LONDON, APRIL 6. The former James Bond actor, Sir Sean Connery, is helping to spearhead Britain's economic fightback against the foot-and-mouth epidemic which has taken a heavy financial toll on the farming and tourism industries.

An audit handed to the Prime Minister, Mr. Tony Blair's Labour government showed the epidemic could cost Britain at least œ5 billion ($7.18 billion) by September in lost tourism, The Times newspaper reported.

Mr. Blair is mounting a major campaign to try to persuade foreign tourists that it remains a green and pleasant land to visit, despite television pictures of blazing pyres heaped with livestock carcasses and ``keep out'' signs plastered across wide areas of countryside.

The government said on Thursday that overall tourism revenues were down by 10 per cent but had slumped by as much as 80 per cent in areas worst affected by foot-and-mouth. Some hotels had reported 100 per cent cancellations.

``It is essential that we get across that Britain is definitely open for tourism,'' the Culture Secretary, Mr. Chris Smith said.

Some tourism operators warned it could take at least two years to win back the lost ground from the highly-infectious and financially crippling livestock disease, which has also spread on a much smaller scale to the Netherlands, France and Ireland.

``It will take until 2003 before we can hope to regain our position,'' Mr. Richard Tobias, chief executive of the British incoming tour operators association, told the Financial Times.

Sir Sean used a ceremony in Washington on Thursday to urge Americans not to be put off by the television pictures of the epidemic. ``Come this year in particular. You will find our majestic countryside open... Our championship golf courses open, though not that easy, and you will find the hearts of our people open,'' said the Oscar-winning Scottish actor.

Britain warned on Thursday that the epidemic would not be stamped out soon, even though the government's top scientist believes the outbreak could be peaking. British ministers struck a cautious tone, while Danes heaved a sigh of relief.

Tests on a suspect cow in Denmark, which has not had foot-and- mouth since the early 1980s, proved negative.

A team of 15 vets arrived in Britain from the U.S. to bolster a mass slaughter programme. About 1,500 vets are working on the epidemic, 125 of them from abroad.

- Reuters

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Section  : International
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