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‘If the smell can get out, so can the virus’: Stench of foot-and-mouth farms was only the beginning

When Paul Vallely visited affected farms in March 2001, the piling up of dead animals, left unburied for as long as a week, was just the latest problem for farmers left struggling after the outbreak

Wednesday 03 April 2019 18:37 BST
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A government official supervises as funeral pyres burn at a farm in Dartmoor, March 2001
A government official supervises as funeral pyres burn at a farm in Dartmoor, March 2001

The sound of hollow laughter could be heard echoing round the nation’s farmyards yesterday after the minister of agriculture, Nick Brown, appeared on the television and claimed he was “absolutely certain” the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease was now under control. Not that they were laughing at Blackrigg Farm near Longtown in Cumbria. There the air reeked from the carcasses of animals that had been slaughtered three days earlier but had yet to be disposed of by the Ministry of Agriculture (Maff) officials.

“The place is stinking,” said Robert Storey, from one of the families who farm on the small lowland holding. “There’s effluent and blood running out of the buildings and into the yard. It is not a nice place to live.”

The piling up of dead animals is the latest problem for farmers afflicted by the outbreak. In parts of Devon yesterday there were carcasses that had been left unburied for as long as a week, according to John Hodge, a hill farmer and chairman of Dartmoor Commoners.

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