Britain to exhume foot-and-mouth carcasses

LONDON - The carcasses of 900 cattle and sheep buried in the wrong place during the foot-and-mouth cull in Britain must be dug up because they could pollute an underground spring.

Britain's Environment Agency said it had warned against burying the animals in a gravel pit on the farm in County Durham but its advice was ignored.

Douglas Foster, the farmer at the centre of the row, said he had seen a fax with a cross marking the wrong site. He dismissed the exhumation as a "little problem."

The 650 sheep and 242 cattle were slaughtered on the farm more than two weeks ago but the rotting bodies will now have to be exhumed after Mr Foster's domestic water supply started smelling strangely.

Agency officials were concerned that the underground stream that runs between two villages and supplies local farms could be affected. There has been no evidence of contamination so far.

Mr Foster said: "There should be no burials here at all because the whole area is full of springs. I can't make a decision, it's the Environment Agency that makes the decisions."

Officials at the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Maff) have now agreed to dig up the carcasses and rebury them.

It said it had gone along with the advice of the Environment Agency and claimed contractors buried the carcasses in the wrong place after discussions with the farmer.

But Maff was criticised for not supervising the burial. John Shuttleworth, a county councillor, said: "The whole thing is just a mess."

The disposal of carcasses has been at the centre of controversy since the start of the cull because of the backlog of cases and the arguments over the best way of getting rid of the dead animals.

Residents on Anglesey blocked lorries from reaching an airfield last week because of fears over air and water pollution.

The leader of Britain's Conservative Party, William Hague, called for the Army to take full control of the disposal of animals slaughtered in the foot–and–mouth clampdown.

The Conservative leader said the Ministry of Agriculture (Maff) was badly over–stretched and the drafting in of extra soldiers was needed.

"It is increasingly clear that the Maff officials organising the Government's control and eradication programme have become hopelessly overstretched by the scale of the crisis.

"When we called for the Army to be brought in, the slaughter backlog was just over 30,000 animals. It now stands at nearly 350,000 – over 10 times higher.

"At the current rate of slaughter, it would take 15 days to slaughter those animals that have already been authorised to be culled.

"This delay means that infected animals are breathing the disease into the air and contaminating more and more farms.

"It is clear that, had the Army been involved from the beginning, a backlog of this scale need never have arisen."

The reburial in County Durham is expected to start on Saturday under the supervision of Army personnel with carcasses transported to a landfill site.

The animals were buried on Low Houselop Farm, near Tow Law, an area that has been badly hit by foot-and-mouth.

An Environment Agency spokeswoman said: "We do give advice about the suitability of sites, but then it is up to Maff and the farmers what they do.In this case we advised this site was not suitable."

A Maff spokesman said the farmer was keen that the carcasses should have been buried in a gravel pit on his farm.

Meanwhile, the first case of foot-and-mouth in a city has been confirmed at an urban zoo on the outskirts of Bristol.

Lawrence Weston City Farm had been closed since mid-February to try to escape the disease but it was confirmed after a pig showed signs of the disease.

The other animals, including sheep and goats, were slaughtered within hours.

- INDEPENDENT

Herald Online feature: Foot-and-mouth disaster

World organisation for animal health

UK Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food

The European Commission for the Control of Foot-and-Mouth Disease

Pig Health/Foot and Mouth feature

Virus databases online