A cow from a Wiltshire farm has been incinerated after it was found to contain anthrax.
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Hazard response teams were called to a farm in rural Wiltshire after the disease was detected in the body of a dead cow.
“An isolated case of anthrax in a cow has been confirmed at a farm in the Westbury area… following the death of a cow at the end of last week”, the local authority, Wiltshire Council, said in a statement.
Public Health England have gone on to assure that the chances that anthrax was passed on to any human that was in close proximity to the animal was “very low”. “There is no risk to the wider community”, he said.
The last livestock case of the rare disease was on a beef farm in south Wales.
All those who came into contact with the cow have been monitored and the farm on the western edge of Westbury towards the Somerset border has been cordoned off.
Maggie Rae, director of public health and Wiltshire Council corporate director added: “We worked with our partners both locally and nationally and swift action was taken to deal with the immediate risk”.
Anthrax is a bacterial infection caused by Bacillus anthracis, spores of which can survive in the environment for years or decades, according to Public Health England.
“Obviously the most import thing we needed to do, which we did over the weekend, was have the cow incinerated and make sure it was disposed of safely”. Before that, the last case seen in Britain was in 2002. Their sympathies go out to the farmer affected by the recent case as the public need not to worry.
All sudden, unexplained deaths of cattle are now investigated for anthrax with hundreds of examples examined each year. They are not sure if the said farmer is a member of NFU but they will offer assistance.
A spokesperson said: “Cattle and sheep can die quickly from anthrax, but their carcasses may show no obvious signs of the disease”.
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Thorough cooking of meat will destroy anthrax spores, but eating raw or undercooked meat from infected animals may lead to gastro-intestinal anthrax, although in the United Kingdom there are strict procedures in place before slaughter.
