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Benn said tests had been carried out on around 50 cattle culled late Monday and confirmed a second batch of cases. The cows were within the initial two-mile-radius protection zone set up Friday around a farm where a first group of infected cattle were found, 30 miles southwest of London.
Laurence Matthews, who owns the farm where the second infected herd grazed, said the news had raised fears the virus could spread across the local rural community.
"We were starting to think this virus had been contained and maybe we were going to be getting back to normality in a few weeks," Matthews told British Broadcasting Corp. radio. "Now this has set us back again and most farmers, and I've been speaking to a few, are very, very scared."
Many fear a repeat of scenes from 2001, when 7 million animals were culled and incinerated on pyres dotted across the landscape, devastating agriculture and rural tourism in Britain.
Matthews, who met Prime Minister Gordon Brown as he toured the region Monday, said the infected cows belonged to a fellow farmer who used his land.
He called for local footpaths to be closed within the exclusion zone, saying some farmers believed the virus could be carried and spread on the feet of walkers passing through the area.
Britain's Health and Safety Executive said it was releasing findings Tuesday of examinations into potential biosecurity breaches at a vaccine laboratory about four miles from the scene of the outbreak, officials said.
The laboratory is shared by the government's Institute for Animal Health, or IAH, and a private pharmaceutical company, Merial Animal Health
- the British arm of Duluth, Ga.-based Merial Ltd.
Merial said it found no evidence of a breach in biosecurity, and the IAH claimed a check of records found "limited use" of the virus in the past four weeks.
"The findings of the inquiry, which has looked at whether there have been any biosecurity lapses will be delivered around lunchtime," said a safety executive spokeswoman, on customary condition of anonymity in line with policy.
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Investigators have also looked into the possibility that recent flooding had helped the spread of the virus.Foot-and-mouth disease affects cloven-hoofed animals including cows, sheep, pigs and goats, but does not typically affect humans.
Britain's Chief Veterinary Officer Debby Reynolds said the strain found in the first outbreak matched samples taken during Britain's 1967 outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease. The strain had not been seen in animals for a long time, but was used to produce vaccines, she said.
Brown, who broke off a vacation to handle the response, said inquiries were continuing to pinpoint the cause of the outbreak, but acknowledged the disease strain found in the first infected herd is the same used at the research laboratory.
National Farmers' Union president Peter Kendall said the latest case was "not entirely unexpected" given the nature of the disease.
The first herd of around 120 cows was slaughtered Saturday after the virus was identified and confirmed in two animals, the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, or DEFRA, said.
A farmer first noticed signs of illness in his cows on July 29 and notified authorities on Thursday, according to a government report filed to the World Organization for Animal Health.
The European Commission endorsed Britain's ban on the export of livestock, meat and milk. The commission also backed London's decision to halt movement of cattle, sheep, goats and pigs nationwide to prevent the spread of the virus.
Imports of British pigs and pork products have been banned by the United States, Japan, Russia and South Korea in response to the outbreak. The United States and Japan already have bans in place on British beef imports.
[Associated Press; by David
Stringer]
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