English farmer guilty over foot-and-mouth outbreak

12.30pm

LONDON - A pig farmer whose animals were said to have sparked the Britain's worst ever foot-and-mouth outbreak has been found guilty of failing to tell officials his herd had the virus, according to court officials.

Robert Waugh, who ran a pig farm on rented land in northern England, faced a total of 15 charges over the highly infectious livestock disease which swept through rural communities last year and saw millions of animals slaughtered and burned.

The 56-year-old was yesterday found guilty on several counts of failing to notify authorities of the outbreak at his pig-fattening farm, which supplied livestock to an abattoir in Essex near London, where the disease was first discovered in February, 2001.

Waugh was also found guilty of feeding unprocessed waste to his animals. He faces up to six months in prison when sentenced in June.

"Well I don't regret anything I done, because I didn't know the disease was there, so I couldn't report it," Waugh told BBC television.

From the Essex abattoir foot-and-mouth raced like wildfire across the countryside, forcing authorities to dig mass graves and slaughter and burn millions of infected cattle, pigs and sheep in huge funeral pyres that shamed and shocked the nation.

Although the highly infectious disease posed no threat to human health, it devastated livestock herds and robbed the British economy of millions of pounds in lost farming and tourism revenue as the countryside was effectively closed down.

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), which carried out extensive investigations at Waugh's farm in Northumberland, welcomed the verdict.

"The guilty verdicts that have been reached demonstrate how seriously these matters are regarded...DEFRA has since banned the practice of feeding swill to pigs in the UK," DEFRA said in a statement.

A group of farmers, vets and businesses lost a legal challenge in March to the government's refusal to hold a public inquiry into the foot-and-mouth crisis.

Many observers said Prime Minister Tony Blair's Labour government had bungled the handling of the crisis from the outset.

- REUTERS

Feature: Foot-and-mouth disaster

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