HILARY BENN, the environment secretary, is facing fresh embarrassment after a senior European Union official said that biosecurity at the government site blamed for the foot and mouth outbreak was a “parody”.

The European commission is to send officials to investigate the causes of the resurgence of the disease, which the National Farmers’ Union estimates is costing farmers £10m a day.

Alf-Eckbert Füssel, of the animal health unit at the European commission, said: “Last time it was clear it was an isolated incident, but this is different. Now we have to be afraid about further spread.”

He warned that under a strict interpretation of the rules the government-funded laboratory at Pirbright in Surrey should have been closed until it complied with EU standards.

Füssel said EU investigators would fly in tomorrow to monitor attempts to control the disease and later to examine biosecurity at Pirbright, where the Institute for Animal Health, a government-funded body, and Merial, a private company, have laboratories dealing with foot and mouth disease (FMD).

“All such laboratories have to comply with the security standards and we can see at Pirbright they have had a failure of these standards,” said Füssel. “[The institute] could be struck off annex II [of the European directive that allows it to handle FMD].”

The virus had escaped partly because new high-tech facilities are being built at Pirbright. “It’s a parody,” Füssel said. However, he added: “Pirbright is a very important laboratory for the whole of the world and it has done a lot of good.”

From today farmers in England are again allowed to take livestock to slaughter, after a relaxation of the rules by Debby Reynolds, the chief veterinary officer.

However, restrictions in the surveillance zone continue. By yesterday 1,166 animals had been slaughtered since the most recent outbreak was detected.

The latest animals, 25 pigs, were slaughtered yesterday afternoon after a vet identified clinical signs of foot and mouth at a farm close to the site of the original outbreak.

FMD was confirmed in cattle belonging to Robert Lawrence at Milton Park Farm near Egham on Wednesday, a few days after the government claimed that the disease had been “eradicated in the UK in 2007”. A further case was confirmed on Friday at the neighbouring property, Stroude Farm, owned by Ernest Ward.

Scientists say the strain of FMD is the same as the one from Pirbright that caused the outbreak last month, but they are still trying to determine whether the virus has leaked from Pirbright a second time or has remained in the surrounding environment since August.

Chris Huhne, the Liberal Democrat environment spokesman, said: “If this second outbreak is due to a further biosecurity lapse then Pirbright should stop operating until a thorough review ensures public and animal safety. Defra simply cannot evade responsibility for the lapses in biosecurity that have occurred.”

Two official reports have concluded that the outbreak of the disease in August was caused by poor biosecurity at the Pirbright site, which is being blamed on a lack of government funding. The live virus was flushed from a laboratory into a dilapidated leaky drainage system, which contaminated ground next to construction work. At the time tons of mud from the building work were being transported off the site for disposal.

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) established that on July 20 and July 25 six lorries transported subsoil in 15-ton loads from Pirbright to Comp-ton, about 10 miles south. The lorries, whose loads were uncovered, followed a route that took them directly past a farm where the first outbreak was confirmed on August 3. A second outbreak was detected three days later at another farm a mile away.

Investigators also discovered that soil, potentially contaminated with the virus, was taken from Pirbright to Basingstoke and Wrecclesham, near Farn-ham. Many other vehicles that visited the Pirbright site could not be traced because the gate log entry was unreadable and some visitors to the site were not even recorded.

The HSE report also revealed: Merial, a private company producing thousands of litres of live virus for vaccinations, failed to sterilise effluent fully before discharging it into the drains. Access to the site was poorly controlled. Not all people or vehicles were logged, in particular construction workers. Security at the main laboratory area of the institute was lax. A single door with a digital lock allowed entry, but the code had not been changed for years and no one was sure how many people knew it.

A second report, by Professor Brian Spratt of Imperial College London, also concluded that leaky drains and lorries were the most likely source of the disease being released.

FMD had been found to survive “up to 20 weeks on hay or straw, up to six months in slurry, up to three days on soil in summer and 28 days on soil in autumn”. Spratt added that “survival has been reported up to 50 days in water”.

Yet just a month after the outbreaks the government declared the country was clear of the disease. “I am satisfied that foot and mouth has been eradicated from the UK in 2007,” said Reynolds on September 7.

Spratt said the government now had to establish whether the virus had survived for more than 30 days in the natural habitat. He told The Sunday Times: “Declaring an area free of foot and mouth after 30 days is an international norm. But if it’s seen that the 30-days rule did not work in this country and perhaps internationally, they will have to reassess that.”

Peter Ainsworth, the shadow environment secretary, said: “The government followed procedure [in declaring the disease eradicated], but it was the shortest possible period.”

Explore UK News

• Crime News

• Education News

• Health News

• Science News

• Scotland News

Times Recommends

• An officer and a gentle woman
• Dame Helen Mirren is worthy of the Epidaurus
• Foods that can help to prevent swine flu