With the news that the fourth case of Blue Tongue disease has been discovered in a farm in Suffolk, how much danger do you think there is from this disease, compared with foot and mouth?

Before a couple of weeks ago I had never heard of Blue tongue diesease, but the timing for farmers of its discovery in England couldn't have been much worse coming so soon after the foot and mouth outbreak.

DEFRA have said that the cases of Blue Tongue are not an outbreak "unless further investigation demonstrates that disease is circulating between the local animal and midge populations".

I know that the disease is spread by midges, is not dangerous to humans and that it has been quite a problem in Europe, is it as destructive as foot and mouth and what are its symptoms?

A good web link here for all the ins & outs of Blue Tongue can be found on the DEFRA web page:

http://www.defra.gov.uk/animalh/diseases.../index.htm

I'm not sure how destructive this is going to be, but what I do know is that only the one effected animal is culled, not the whole stock like Foot & Mouth. But this is a blow to farmers as all Movement has been stopped - apart from those animals sent immediately to the slaughter house. A friend of mine has a small flock of South Down sheep & usually by now she would have put the ram in amongst them, but she has to buy a new ram & now she can't.

BBC Radio 4 had quite a long item about the disease on the other day but for the life of me I can't remember the symtoms etc.

At that point the only case was in Scotland where I had been a couple of days earlier and had been bitten rather a lot by midges on the loch - infact the midge bites are still there now .

I was just very pleased to hear on the item that it isn't a danger to humans ... unless of course forgetting what you hear on a news item is a symptom I did however catch a cold while up there and have been feeling a bit lack luster ever since.. hey ho.. winter is on the way!

I believe that an outbreak has been confirmed now, although no slaughter has taken place because unlike foot and mouth the disease can't be transmitted between cattle, but only by midges.

It's difficult to tell how destructive it could be, it also seems to me that if there was an outbreak it would be very difficult to control because of the way it is transmitted.

I've done a bit of research and it seems that the main symptoms of Blue Tongue are high fever, swelling of the lips and occasionally blue lips and tongue. According to the website it is not usually fatal.