AS a worsening foot-and-mouth disease crisis turns the countryside into a no-go area, need we look any further for the spread of this pestilence than Brussels?

I wonder because, at the weekend, though the North West was then still free of confirmed cases, two East Lancashire farms came under investigation because they had supplied pigs to the same abattoir in Essex as the one in Northumberland that is the prime suspect for the outbreak.

But ask yourselves why farms in East Lancashire and Northumberland should be transporting animals the length of the country to an abattoir as far away as Essex?

Are there no slaughterhouses in their neck of the woods?

Well, there were plenty until Britain kowtowed to the EU and lots of small local abattoirs were shut because they could not afford to meet the prescriptive and costly regulations imposed by the Brussels bureaucrats.

It may be that, in nature, foot-and-mouth is an airborne infection, but it has been spread by EU diktat -- and the UK's craven compliance with it.