FOOT-AND-MOUTH has heaped more misery on the rural parts of Gwent with another popular show scrapped because of the disease.

Organisers of the South Wales Shire Horse Show have decided to cancel the annual event due to foot-and-mouth.

The committee took the decision to abandon the planned event in Abergavenny this August, fearing that the exhibitors and traders who travel from across the UK would increase the risk of spreading the disease. With visitors known to be travelling from areas such as Cheshire and the West Country where there have been so many outbreaks, it was agreed that the most responsible action would be to cancel the event.

The committee also took the decision to scrap the show now, to ensure there would not be too great a loss to bear financially.

But organisers have vowed to bounce back and plan a bigger and better show next year. The latest blow to the beleaguered programme of agricultural events follows the news, exclusively revealed in the Argus on Friday, that the hugely popular Bedwellty Show had been scrapped because of foot-and-mouth.

The decision was made a week before a new case of foot-and-mouth was confirmed at Lower Pant-y-Resk farm, just a few miles from the show site at the Showfield, Blackwood. Bedwellty Show council chairman Goronwy James said: "We cancelled the show after great deliberation, but it was very wise with what has happened since."

Other shows which have fallen foul of foot-and-mouth include the Chepstow Show - one of the county's most popular and longest-running events.

The decision by Chepstow Agricultural Society to cancel the August event for the first time since the outbreak of the Second World War followed a number of confirmed foot-and-mouth cases near Chepstow.

Show secretary Sheila Frost told the Argus the committee had looked at the possibility of carrying on with an event which last year attracted about 8,000 people but felt that "an agricultural show without livestock is no longer an agricultural show".