The meat industry was facing a minimum of three months of crippling movement restrictions after Defra confirmed that the Bluetongue virus was actively circulating among cattle in East Anglia.
With 19 cases of the midge-borne disease confirmed at the start of the week, industry strategists said only a national vaccine plan or an unusually hard winter would break the infection cycle.
Concern is now focused on the short-term economic damage to the meat supply chain after movement controls separated finished sheep and cattle from dedicated slaughter operations.
"Something will have to be done quickly to rationalise control zone strategy because really difficult red meat supply chain problems have emerged," said National Beef Association director Kim Haywood. "Fortunately the export of beef, lamb and milk, and all associated products, is not in jeopardy."
On Sunday (30 September) Defra imposed a control zone around sections of Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex and Cambridgeshire and extended a 93-mile surveillance zone stretching from Brighton to Oxford, Leicester and Grimsby.
Large numbers of finished, high-specification cattle are already trapped on specialist feeding farms because they can't be taken to bigger abattoirs outside the zone. Lamb finishers in these counties will be reluctant to restock if they can't get the animals to market.
Meat traders fear severe supply chain disruption and want it minimised by a single control zone covering the whole of Great Britain.
"It is a matter of urgency that sheepmeat and beef supply chains are made as simple as possible," said Norman Bagley, policy director at the Association of Independent Meat Suppliers. "No one wants to see life made difficult for farmers, processors and retailers by complicated and disruptive zoning."
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