THE foot-and-mouth epidemic showed no signs of abating last night as the number of confirmed UK cases spiralled to 69.

In the North-East - one of the country's worst affected areas - five more cases were reported over the weekend.

A pig farm at Hamsterley, County Durham, and a smallholding at Caterway Heads, near Shotley Bridge, are confirmed as infected. A further three farms close to the original outbreak at Heddon-on-the Wall, west of Newcastle, are also contaminated.

In all, there are 68 cases on the mainland and one in Northern Ireland, the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Maff) said.

At a briefing, officials said there were 53,700 animals earmarked for slaughter as a result of the epidemic.

Deputy chief veterinary officer Richard Cawthorne said the number of cases was likely to climb for another week before beginning to decline.

He added it was a "relatively self-limiting disease", which could be kept under control by tight restrictions.

"What we are looking at the moment is a situation where the disease is not spreading by being transmitted directly or by wind-borne means.

"But it is still being distributed among sheep as the sheep are incubating it," he added.

The source of the disease is still being investigated, but imported meat products are suspected.

Ken Anderson, who farms at Hamsterley, near Bishop Auckland, was told his 1,700 pigs must be slaughtered after an agonising five-day wait for the outcome of tests. It is thought only one animal had contracted foot-and-mouth.

Last night, Mr Anderson and his family were trying to come to terms with the devastating effect on their livelihood and were too upset to talk.

Only a couple of hundred yards away, Hamsterley County Junior and Primary School is closed until further notice.

Maff has imposed a 3km exclusion zone around farms in the immediate area of the contaminated smallholding near Shotley Bridge.

The mixed cattle and sheep farms at East Heddon, Heddon-on-the-Wall and Woolsington, which have been confirmed as being infected, are close to Burnside Farm, where all the cases have so far been traced to.

Junior Agriculture Minister Baroness Hayman said: "One of the reassuring things is although these case numbers are going up, the boundaries of infected areas are not changing dramatically."

In Europe, one suspected case in Belgium has been eliminated, but Maff had no news on the progress of a suspicious case in Denmark