Foot-and-Mouth Disease some potential carriers are still slipping into Bermuda.

The Royal Gazette has learned that a veterinary medical representative and sheep owner from the north of England -- one of the areas most affected by the disease -- came into Bermuda just over a week ago.

The man was not stopped at the airport and he was not questioned, according to vet Dr. Maureen Ware-Cieters.

"This alarmed me to the extent that I set about trying to report this to the appropriate authorities with only minimal success,'' Dr. Ware-Cieters wrote in a letter.

"Like everything with Customs, some people do slip through,'' said John Barnes, director of Agriculture and Fisheries. He said that Dr. Ware-Cieters had informed him of the incident but said "there was a limit to what manpower can do''.

This week, he said, he was told a local dairy employee who got the `third degree' when they came through the airport. But for every person coming through the airport to be stopped, searched and disinfected would cost a lot of money and there would be lots of letters to the editor, he added.

"We have to be pragmatic,'' he said about efforts to contain the highly contagious disease which is a threat to all cloven-footed animals.

In her letter to the editor, Dr. Ware-Cieters expressed her fears if the virus reached here.

"In the event of the introduction of the disease would we vaccinate unaffected animals and lose our Foot-and-mouth-free status, thus grounding all movements of animals out of the island? "Would we opt for a mass slaughter of all cloven ungulates? If we did, who would perform this deed? How would we enforce it? What would we do with the carcasses? As it is now we cannot incinerate animal carcasses,'' she wrote.

And she claimed that no official meetings have been held with veterinary surgeons "who at the end of the day are responsible for the recognition of the clinical symptoms and reporting them''.

However, Mr. Barnes said that he had a meeting with the chairman of the Veterinary Association, who then met with local vets over the weekend. "He gave me a written statement with information. We asked them to meet and they had a meeting,'' he said.

But he agreed that it would be the local vets who would be responsible for clinical diagnosis should the disease reach Bermuda.

And the best way to ensure the island's safety is through public awareness and diligence.

"I've been gratified to receive some phone calls from people going to the UK, who might visit farm areas asking what they should and shouldn't do,'' he said. "The word is getting out, which is having a positive effect.'' HEALTH HTH