A vaccination programme in Britain to help curb the spread of foot-and-mouth disease remains only a "possibility", the government there said today.
Although detailed plans have been drawn up, vaccination in a focused area to complement the mass cull will not be introduced until further discussions have taken place, junior Agriculture Minister Baroness Hayman said.
Vaccination was one of the issues discussed today at a meeting of Cobra, the British government's committee set up to discuss the crisis.
Emerging from the meeting Baroness Hayman repeated that no decision had been taken on vaccination yet.
The meeting comes as the Chief Scientific Officer, Professor David King, visits farmers in Cumbria to discuss how the scheme would work.
She said: "We had our usual meeting and discussed a whole range of issues as we do every day and obviously we talked about disposal, we talked about disease figures and we talked about contingency planning for the possibility of supplementary vaccination - but that is contingency planning. Decisions have not been taken yet.
"The chief scientific adviser is up in Cumbria today explaining the science to farmers there. We remain very focused on the 24-hour target and taking out contiguous farms because that is the main disease control measure."
British authorities confirmed yesterday it was considering inoculating cattle currently in winter barns in Cumbria before they are moved out to spring pastures.
PA
