ANIMALS slaughtered on a Gwent farm after MAFF vets confirmed they had foot-and-mouth disease appear to be infection-free, laboratory tests reveal.

The revelation comes as another Newport farm, Sluice House Farm, Peterstone, has been confirmed as being infected with foot-and-mouth disease - the third case in a week along Gwent's coastal belt.

On Thursday, MAFF vets ordered the culling of livestock at Fair Orchard Farm, St Brides, run by farmer Philip David, after they had observed clinical signs of foot and mouth.

However, a blood test carried out at the central veterinary centre in Surrey to test for foot and mouth has returned negative.

Mr David declined to comment, but the National Assembly - agents for MAFF - stressed that a further culture test was outstanding and that lab tests were not "an exact science" and vets had to make a decision at the time.

The spokeswoman told the Argus: "The blood test has returned negative but a culture test is outstanding. The tests are not a 100-per- cent guarantee and the animals on the farm were slaughtered after vets saw clinical signs of foot and mouth."

One thousand animals at Sluice House Farm, in Peterstone, were slaughtered after clinical signs of the disease were confirmed in the farm's 90 cattle. The farm's cattle, 464 sheep and 440 lambs were destroyed over the weekend.

The outbreak was confirmed on Saturday, and comes one week after the first outbreak in Newport at the Fair Orchard Farm, in St Brides.

The current outbreaks in Newport have been the only cases reported in Wales over the past week. Neil Smith, spokesman for the Farmers' Union of Wales in Monmouthshire, said: "This outbreak is very worrying. We thought that we had the disease under control.

"We always knew that there would still be odd cases of the disease as there were in 1967, when a few cases kept popping up, but these three cases so close together are very worrying indeed."

The cases have increased fears that thousands of animals on farms along the coastal belt between Newport and Cardiff could be slaughtered in pre-emptive culls.

Following a policy change last week, animals on neighbouring farms are no longer culled automatically, but risk assessments are now being carried out on all the premises surrounding Sluice House Farm.

Mr Smith said: "Maybe these cases indicate the concerns we have about the re-opening of many public footpaths around the country, even though the chances of a member of the public passing on the disease are very slim."