The ministry is having to trace all sheep exported on the Cap Afrique in the past three weeks. Yesterday, the German authorities traced the 348 sheep sent directly by Mr Cleave to Germany on February 12 and killed them as a precautionary measure. The Cap Afrique suspended all operations within hours of the first confirmed outbreak, but the European authorities say it may have been too late to prevent the disease spreading through Europe. After long journeys from as far away as Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales and the west country, animals are known to be highly susceptible to disease. If any of those exported in the past few weeks had already been infected, they could easily have passed it on.
British exporters favour a handful of large stations in Belgium and Holland.
Tracing livestock movements in Europe is difficult, said Mike Gooding of Farmers First, a British sheep exporter. British animals have full documentation, but many animals in continental holding centres are resold in job lots to buyers who quite legally alter their papers of origin. From these staging posts and markets, sheep go all over the continent and many are re-exported with Dutch, French or Belgian papers 1,000 miles or more to abattoirs in Italy, Greece and Spain. Hundreds of thousands of animals are then re-exported outside Europe, especially to the Middle East and North Africa via Italian ports. Yesterday, the Dutch slaughtered 4,300 animals on 11 farms.