MEMORIES of the 2001 foot-and-mouth crisis were reawakened this week as Cumbria responded to fears over the potential of a very different disease outbreak involving avian flu.

It was the turn of the poultry industry to talk of tightening biosecurity as the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs stepped in to introduce disease control measures just in case the virus takes hold in Britain.

Meanwhile people considering joining the trend for keeping a few rare-breed hens appeared to be putting their plans on hold.

"Orders have dropped by more than 50 per cent," reported Vicki Grisedale of Ayside Poultry Arks. "People here are thinking if they start with chickens and bird flu comes, Defra will come and cull them and that's frightening the life out of people.

"They couldn't bear to see them taken as cruelly as animals were with foot-and-mouth."

But the National Farmers' Union was keen to point out that avian flu, despite being as contagious as foot-and-mouth, should be easier to control.

"Poultry are not moved around the country like livestock," said NFU president Tim Bennett.

Avian flu was found at a Norfolk turkey farm in 2001, although a different strain to that causing concern now. All the birds were culled and the disease did not spread.

Meanwhile, Defra has advised poultry farmers that they can keep free range birds outside.

David Brass of Lakes Free Range Eggs near Penrith, Cumbria's biggest free range egg producer, said Defra appeared to have learned some of the lessons of 2001 and was communicating more effectively.

A representative of the state veterinary service had been in touch every day to keep the farm up to speed on developments, he said.

"Because we had foot-and-mouth disease in this area we have always had tight biosecurity. We don't feed birds outside so as not to encourage wild birds to mix with domestic birds but they don't tend to anyway."

David Hirst, Northern regional officer for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, said media coverage had prompted a panic over bird flu but the risk of it being brought to the UK by migratory birds was "very low" because sick birds would not survive the journey.

In Cumbria, Teal ducks do fly in from Eastern Europe presenting a theoretical risk, he said, but most birds traveling to the area for winter were from Greenland and Iceland which had not reported cases of avian flu.

Mr Hirst said the biggest threat was from imported birds, a risk Defra responded to this week, imposing a ban on wild bird imports.

This has hit the South Lakes Wild Animal Park at Dalton-in-Furness, which was awaiting delivery of Andean Condors and King Vultures from a German zoo. The huge birds were to be the main attraction in a new aviary to be launched next year. This may now house the park's existing population of parrots until the ban is waived.

The only UK victim of avian flu remains a quarantined parrot found with the H5NI variant the same virus which killed 60 people in Asia who caught it after being in close contact with infected poultry.

The bird flu virus has not mutated into a disease that can infect humans other than by close contact with sick birds. But, since the world is overdue a flu pandemic, governments are taking the risk seriously while cautioning against panic.

South Lakeland doctors' surgeries have reported an increased take-up of seasonal flu jabs, even though this is not a vaccine against any new viral strain, which might develop from avian flu.

Meanwhile GlaxoSmithKline is benefiting from Government prep-arations for a potential pandemic by increasing supplies of its established antiviral flu drug Relenza. Its Ulverston plant is now undertaking a feasibility study into restarting manufacture of the active ingredient for Relenza, which was stopped several years ago.