No cases of foot and mouth disease have been reported in the Netherlands as yet but farm minister Femke Wiersma has ordered 100,000 vaccines as a precaution, she told MPs in a briefing.

Since December 1, the Netherlands has imported some 3,600 calves from Brandenburg in Germany where the disease was found to have taken hold last week.

The calves ended up at 125 veal processing plants across the country, 100 of which have been checked so far. None of the animals or meat samples have shown any signs of the virus.

The ministry said it expects all 125 plants to have been checked by the end of the week.

Measures such as a ban on the movement of calves and access by unauthorised personnel remain in place although imports have not been halted.

The vaccines will be used to vaccinate animals within a 2 kilometre radius of an infected plant to prevent the pre-emptive slaughter of healthy animals, the minister said

Foot and mouth disease is extremely contagious and affects sheep and goats as well as cows. The last big outbreak in Europe was in 2001 when 300,000 animals in the Netherlands were killed in a pre-emptive cull. The disease is not dangerous to humans.