Pirbright - Human (mis) carriage of FMV says Daily Mail ?

We assume the Daily Mail know the identity and place of work of the employee whom they say carried the FMV from work to their allotment adjacent to a field where Roger Pride's cows were kept. (see note below - @5pm "As at the time of this release, the Defra investigators have advised that they have no evidence linking this member of staff to the outbreak."

Don't get too excited dear ! .... this was their map on Sunday showing the wind blowing 100% the wrong way on the days that transmission is said to have occurred according to the HSE and the Meteorological Office who are good on History but none too good on forecasting what will happen next week ... massively good 25 years ahead however. (It's going to be warmer .er .. somewhere)



The Guradian today say..."Defra said last night it would investigate unconfirmed reports that a worker at one of the Pirbright labs has an allotment near the farm where the outbreak was first detected on Friday."

They also quote microbiology expert Hugh Pennington saying: "My impression is that they haven't found any technical fault and flooding is a potential, but only negligible. What you are left with is human movement." he appeared on BBC Newsnight saying much the same thing.

UPDATE Wednesday 8/8/07

Merial website Press releases ....

"We wish to clarify that Merial does not release water from the shared Pirbright site. We ensure that the water we use in our virus production is treated, we then transfer it to the IAH who treat it further and release it. "

The Guradian Blog has this at 3.30 pm. Merial has issued the following: "A Merial member of staff accompanied Defra investigators to an allotment yesterday as part of the ongoing investigations into foot and mouth disease in Surrey. As at the time of this release, the Defra investigators have advised that they have no evidence linking this member of staff to the outbreak." (@ 5.pm this was NOT on the Merial website.)

The Mary Warmwell site is also an excellent source of information regularly updated during the day with a lot of comments from the farming / country community. her latest update ..

5.pm "Debby Reynolds CVO (with the NFU's Kevin Pearce there too ) has just given a press conference. Eased movements for everywhere outside the two zones. More bad news Slaughter on suspicion , a phrase we'd hoped never to hear again, is about to take place on "an adjacent farm" -third so far. The CVO would not tell reporters any more and could not give any details of the animals that will now die. She referred people to the DEFRA FMV website. for more details of eased restrictions"