FARMERS in the Selby area could breathe a cautious sigh of relief today as initial foot and mouth tests on a suspect pig proved negative.

Tests for swine vesicular disease were also negative, but more tests for both diseases are still needed with the final results not known until next Tuesday.

Selby market in Bawtry Road has been closed amid fears that the sow - spotted with suspect symptoms at a Leicestershire slaughterhouse yesterday - may have passed through it on Wednesday.

And restrictions have been imposed around 34 farms, mostly in East and North Yorkshire, while the source of the pig is traced.

Officers from the Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) were due at the market later today to check pig movement licences.

Ralph Coward, a director of Selby auction mart, said today that he was the only person in the offices.

He said the bio-security measures were still in place at the market from the last outbreak and he had been thoroughly disinfected before going on to the premises.

He said: "I'm waiting for DEFRA officials who want to see all the pig movement licences so they know exactly where every pig has come from.

"We aren't sure at this stage whether the pig went through the market or whether it came on a lorry, whose driver picked up other pigs here before going to the abattoir.

"We don't know where the lorry came from and DEFRA won't tell us."

The Leicestershire slaughterhouse where the pig's condition was discovered yesterday has been sealed off and livestock movements banned within a five miles radius. The sow has been slaughtered.

A spokesman for DEFRA stressed that since the last confirmed case on September 30 last year, there have been a number of FMD investigations, all of which had subsequently tested negative.

*News of the foot and mouth alert came as the full cost of last year's outbreak was revealed in a report to be more than £8 billion - sparking calls by North Yorkshire farming and tourism bosses for major reforms.

Updated: 11:29 Friday, June 21, 2002