Germany hunts down British sandwiches after foot and mouth scare
Airline passengers arriving in Germany from Britain are being stopped and checked for food and other items that could spread the outbreak of foot and mouth.
At Frankfurt international airport and others in Germany, customs officers say they are confiscating and destroying uneaten items such as sandwiches containing meat or cheese. Health authorities say raw meat and raw-milk cheese could be potential carriers of the disease.
Foot and mouth is a relatively low risk for humans but highly contagious for animals like pigs and sheep.
Customs officers at Frankfurt airport say they are doing spot checks of passengers at the main exit points, partly by looking at baggage tags of exiting passengers.
Confiscated food is being incinerated, along with food leftovers on planes that arrive from Britain.
With the foot and mouth outbreak in Britain, Germans are banned from bringing in meat, dairy products, animal skins and hunting trophies from the island, according to the state government of Hesse, where Frankfurt is located.
Germany has not registered any cases of the livestock disease, but North Rhine-Westphalia went ahead with a second round of precautionary slaughters today.
Officials in the state destroyed nearly 1,600 sheep that had been in contact with 350 that were slaughtered earlier because they were imported from a British farm that was hit by foot-and-mouth disease.
