Tokyo Comes Calling on FMD
LONDON, UK - Smith Square in London was awash with Japanese film crews yesterday as various networks sought to cover the foot-and-mouth outbreak in that country.
20 May 2010
1 minute read
The cameras were rolling outside the Defra building and the NFU's Westminster office as reporters sought to find out more about our experiences with the disease. NFU Acting Head of Communications, Terry Jones, spoke to Tokyo Broadcasting System, one of the oldest and largest independent broadcast networks in Japan with an regular audience of up to 10 million viewers.
Speaking afterwards, he said: “British farmers will have a great deal of sympathy for their Japanese counterparts at this difficult time. The film crews were interested in the lessons learned from the two UK outbreaks of the last ten years. Biosecurity, vigilance and government and industry working together to take decisive action were vital in controlling the disease here in 2007."
More than 100,000 pigs, beef cattle and dairy cows have been culled so far in Japan and a further 200,000 animals will be destroyed in the coming week, Agriculture Minister Hirotaka Akamatsu told reporters today.
