THE Government is today, apparently, on the verge of finally grasping the grim reality of the foot-and-mouth crisis, and fighting the disease with the sort of

ruthlessness so absent over previous months.

The Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, set up just after the election two months ago, is starting to shake off the muddled thinking and

prevarication that blighted the old Ministry of

Agriculture, Fisheries and Food.

Although many of the officials are the same, the much-needed change in culture is starting to take effect.

It is probably too late for the traumatised areas of the

Penrith Spur, including Shap and Crosby Ravensworth, where farmers and their neighbours are in a state of shock at the scale of the devastation reaped by the disease.

But, hopefully, the major measures due to be announced today are just in time to prevent its spread into Kendal and onwards into the Lake District.

A series of disinfection stations guarding roads 24-hours-a-day, police and DEFRA patrols with the power to stop and search, as well as strict cleaning regimes, are the type of actions imposed by the authorities months ago in France and Holland which stopped the spread of the disease in its tracks.

Let's hope that the same impact is achieved here.

The powers declared in Specially Infected Areas are the same sort of protected zone measures imposed around Thirsk in North Yorkshire to prevent foot-and-mouth reaching the pig herds in the east of that county.

This type of containment combined with the widespread testing programme show that the Government is

trying to get ahead of the disease and hunt it down.

About time too, considering that isolation and

slaughter are the only weapons the Government has chosen to use during this epidemic.

The Government is trying to play down suggestions that immunisation has been resurrected as a tactic this time round.

If the new measures fail to wipe out the disease quickly, while summer and the hot weather lasts, they may be forced to think again.

The more long-term desirability of inoculating the

national herds will be one of the aspects to be addressed by the inquiry, public or not, promised by the Prime Minister.

Certainly the scientific support for the jab is gaining ground.

Meanwhile, it was also made clear by Rural Affairs

minister Alun Michael that compensation is being used as a tool to force businesses to rethink their methods in the wake of the crisis.

Specific training needs or marketing strategies, which fit within the sort of sustainable rural businesses set out in the government's rural white paper, are likely to get financial backing.

There will be no indiscriminate cash handouts.

Again, this has to be the right way to use public funds.

There are signs that the new ministry is starting to employ the sort of joined up thinking lacking before.

After Mr Michael helped launch the Countryside Agency's Welcome Back campaign designed to woo walkers back to the Lakes, he set off to take advantage of the re-opened fells himself.

Let's hope that he took advantage of the open space to reflect that, although the Government is starting to take steps in the right direction, it still has a mountain to climb to end this crisis and restore confidence in its own commitment to the countryside's future.