UK's Blair on foot-and-mouth crisis

Blair: 'Britain is open'

LONDON, England (CNN) -- UK Prime Minister Tony Blair has been talking about his country's foot-and-mouth crisis with CNN's London bureau chief Tom Mintier.

The following is a transcript of the interview, broadcast on CNN International television.

Tom Mintier: The foot and mouth crisis in Britain unfortunately is about numbers, big numbers.

Three million cattle set for slaughter. What started out a month and a half ago as one case is now over 740. Tourism is affected drastically. $140 million week in the tourism industry is being lost.

On the disease, it's gone from one case to 740. There is now talk about a vaccination program. How do you stop the spread of this disease?

AUDIO UK Prime Minister Tony Blair tells CNN: "Britain is open for business" 470K/43 sec. AIFF or WAV sound     ALSO Dutch confirm new virus cases

Tony Blair: Well you stop it essentially by making sure that you slaughter out the affected animals.

It's a big problem for the farming industry...it's not a human health problem, at all, but it is a big problem for the farming industry but you should remember that the total amount of animals we slaughtered today is only roughly what we normally slaughter in one week for the food chain in the UK.

And actually, rather less than one percent of the livestock farms in the country are directly affected by foot and mouth disease.

Now it is a big problem for the farming industry, it's a huge problem and a tragedy for some of the individual farmers that have lost their livelihoods, making sure they've got compensation.

But the point that I really want to make is for the tourism is Britain is open, there's no reason why people should not come and enjoy what you've always enjoyed here.

There's no restrictions on any town or city in the country and visiting what people want to visit and if you go out into the countryside you can do everything you want to do, but there are restrictions for people going on livestock farms.

Tom Mintier: In the beginning when there was talk about footpaths being closed, people took it as their patriotic duty not to go out of the city into the countryside. Do you think you went too far in the warnings initially?

Tony Blair: No, we had to do that at the beginning until we saw where the disease was.

But now, I mean remember, that the vast majority of the country still is foot and mouth disease free, but there are particular areas where it's very strong.

And we had to at the very beginning put a block on all farm movements and say to people 'look until we just see...exactly where this is, we'll put the restrictions up.

But really for several weeks we've been in the position where there's absolutely no reason why people shouldn't come into the countryside and enjoy what they've always enjoyed.

Tom Mintier: A lot of the people involved in the tourism industry say there are 50 jobs a day going away. What do you do to reinvigorate, besides saying that Britain is open, that if you want to come and vacation there are things to see?

Tony Blair: Well we're doing things for the tourism business like rates holidays and tax holidays and that type of thing, but quite honestly what they need is tourists.

They need trade, they need business, and you know if you come to any of the cities, London and York, Durham, Bath, Canterbury, Edinburgh, any of the cities you want to see, any of the towns that you would want to go to, as I say, even in the countryside itself, anywhere you would want to go in the countryside you can go.

As long as when you're out in the countryside and you're walking you're not out on the livestock farms.

That's not to protect the people, incidentally it's to protect the livestock. because this disease is like a common cold in the human population, but it is a debilitating effect on the animals.

It's not like BSE it's got no human health problems at all, indeed some animals like sheep get it and recover from it, but for the cattle in particular and the pigs it can reduce their value very significantly, and so it's a big commercial problem for the farmers, livelihood problem for the farmers and we need to deal with it.

Tom Mintier: So much is about perception and reputation. You talk to a lot of people in the tourism industry and they fear that their reputation as a destination has been tarnished. That by saying don't go into the countryside, initially, that it put people off not just in Britain, but from afar, from making plans, and they decided to go elsewhere?

Tony Blair: Well, you've just got to get people to get a sense of perspective about it, again.

Which is one of the reasons you know, I'm talking to you, frankly, so that people see that, you know, because if you look at some of the pictures that have been on the television you see some of the burning animals and so forth you might think that the whole countryside is like this.

As I say less than one percent of the livestock of the country has been affected. It's very much located in particular areas where the main problems are.

And we're slaughtering it out, because that is the best way to do it in order to preserve our export status, and our foot and mouth-disease-free status for the future as a country. It's just important people therefore realise that this isn't BSE, it's not a human health problem.

There's absolutely no reason why you shouldn't come, if you're an American tourist come and visit the UK and visit as you always have, and you'll find the things that you want to do are still there for you to do.

Tom Mintier: As a crisis do you think your government did enough, early enough?

Tony Blair: Well you know, from the very beginning, when we put the block on movements, and some people said in a sense as you've just been saying, well wasn't that an overreaction, we've been caught between criticisms of overreacting, criticisms of under reacting, pretty much on alternate days.

The truth is that until you know the full spread of the disease, because it's terribly difficult to track, it is as I say like tracking a common cold amongst the human population, you know, you can't be sure.

We've now got a far better fix on the areas where it's at it's most intensive, but the real problem we had was it was two weeks before the disease was reported, it should have been reported before, but it was two weeks before it was reported.

In those two weeks there were thousands of sheep movements, zig-zagging across the country. And as I say, sheep incubate the disease, they pass it on, but they often recover themselves and you wouldn't notice any difference from it, so it's been a difficult thing to do.

Tom Mintier: One final question, as a political story, in the beginning this was a national crisis, nobody talked about the way the government was handling it. It's turned a bit political in the last 24 hours. Can you keep this as a national crisis and not allow politics to come into this?

Tony Blair: Well, I guess politics often comes into these things. But in the end, I think most people know that this is a problem that has arisen for, you know, particular reasons that we know, that it's important that the government gets on top of it, controls it, eradicates it.

And that really that it shouldn't form part of some great party political debate, it's simply an issue that we've got to deal with.

Tom Mintier: But it has become a political party issue.

Tony Blair: Yes, but things do. But it shouldn't distract us from the key job, which is getting on and making sure that we eradicate the disease, (and) at the same time sending out to the tourist industry a strong message to people saying for goodness sake, you know, come and do the things you've always done, because there's no reason why you shouldn't.

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