: we are in recession from some years, and this year the updated
: internal product is projected to be minus-zero...

Saturday March 17 12:59 AM ET
Nations Fight Foot-And-Mouth, Grains Threat Looms

By Mike Miller

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Across Europe, Asia and the Americas, nations scrambled to keep foot-and-mouth disease from their herds as the expanding crisis threatened on Saturday to spill into the world's huge grains trade.

Among the latest in a litany of restrictive trade moves, China banned meat imports from countries with outbreaks of the disease, including France and Argentina and Colombia suspended imports of meat from Britain -- the epicenter of the highly-contagious disease -- France and Argentina.

Bosnia banned imports of animals from Britain and France and Portugal prohibited imports of livestock and animal products from seven countries outside the European Union.

And Japan, one of the globe's biggest agricultural importers, reportedly began taking steps to stop buying grain from Argentina, which confirmed this week an outbreak of the highly contagious livestock disease.

Trade sources in the United States said on Friday that Japanese trading houses received e-mails from their Tokyo offices saying the outbreak in Argentina was a concern.

``What the Japanese are doing now is not buying any additional corn from Argentina,'' one source said.

Any steps by importers to restrict grain would deepen the crisis because the world grain market is even larger than trade in meat.

The head of the Paris-based world animal health organization, Office International des Epizooties, had tried earlier in the week to quell such restrictions by saying that the risk of spreading food-and-mouth disease on grain was close to zero.

The disease is not a threat to humans but causes blisters in the mouth and on the hooves of cloven-footed animals. The virus is easily transmitted from animal to animal and can also be carried on clothing and car tires and even on the wind.

An outbreak of foot-and-mouth was discovered in Britain last month and jumped to a cattle herd in France earlier this week.

Britain has decided to kill even healthy animals in a desperate effort to stamp out the disease -- a move that set off a rural revolt by some farmers who vowed not to allow death squads onto their land.

The head of a farmers' group in predicted the slaughter could lead to the death of 1 million animals in a mass cull expected to last several weeks.

Amid the drastic measures, a European Union official expressed hope the United States might scale back its broad ban on imports of EU raw meat and livestock.

The United States imposed the ban earlier this week after the disease spread from Britain to a herd of cattle in France.

The United States set new restrictions on imports of cats, dogs and horses from countries affected by foot-and-mouth. Although the animals cannot become infected with the disease, they can transmit it by carrying the virus on their feet, fur and bedding.

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