January 15, 2002 — LONDON — It’s been more than 10 months since the first devastating outbreak, and British officials say that its foot-and-mouth disease days are over.

At the time of this report, the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs told The Associated Press that the last remaining suspect area, Northumberland in northeastern England, was officially being designated free of the disease.

Since the outbreak was detected near London in February 2001, Britain had more than 2,030 confirmed cases of foot-and-mouth disease, the last of which was discovered in late September.

More than 4 million animals, including 3.3 million sheep, were slaughtered to hinder the epidemic.

Lord Whitty, a minister for the department, gave credit to vets, officials, farmers and the countries wider rural community for achieving the disease-free status.

“However, we are not quite at the end of the road yet,” he adds. “Work is still going on to complete cleansing and disinfection on individual farms and to obtain international recognition that Britain can be declared disease free. The impact of this terrible outbreak will certainly be felt for some time yet.”