Ministry had no concerns, pig breeder tells court

Bobby Waugh, the pig-breeder whose smallholding is believed to have been the source of last year's foot-and-mouth epidemic, yesterday told a court that his farm had been visited five times in two years by Government and Trading Standards officers without any cause for concern.

Mr Waugh, 56, also described how, by feeding his pigs swill from local schools and restaurants, he was swamped with cutlery and crockery thrown away with it.

"There was so much,'' said Mr Waugh. "There could be a dustbin-full of cutlery per week. It might have 10 teapots in it." Mr Waugh said he had found a charitable cause for the cutlery. "There was a chap who collected it to take it to Romania," he said.

Evidence of crockery, including a porcelain Chinese spoon found by Ministry of Agriculture officials in the pens and walkways of Mr Waugh's piggery, has been cited as proof of his criminal failure to boil unprocessed swill.

But Mr Waugh said they had not concerned Jimmy Dring, a Ministry official who visited him on January 24 last year, four weeks before foot-and-mouth was traced. Afterwards he granted Mr Waugh a licence to continue feeding swill.

Prosecution witnesses had testified that pig bones and carcasses were seen on a fire on the farm. But Mr Waugh insisted the bones had been "picked out of the swill tank". The Ministry man also allegedly inspected the tanks into which processed swill was poured and would even have seen the fire which burned constantly at the piggery, he said.

Mr Waugh, of Pallion, Sunderland, denies 16 animal health charges, including failing to notify officials of a foot-and-mouth outbreak at the Burnside Farm piggery at Heddon-on-the-Wall in Northumberland. He was taciturn but showed few signs of nerves, occasionally laughing at his own words during two hours of testimony.

He also maintained an air of confidence in pig-breeding practices picked up from his father, from the age of 15. He said he had no possible financial gain from failing to report foot-and-mouth and had notified the Ministry of what proved to be swine vesicular disease, similar to foot-and-mouth, in his animals 27 years ago. But he was not fussy about the sows he bought to fatten and sell on. "The pigs I wanted were just any old rubbish to fatten up," he told Bedlington magistrates' court.

Official six-monthly ministry visits were a compulsory part of gaining a licence to feed pigswill. They were supplemented by two visits from Northumberland Trading Standards officers after a complaint about the fire on his land. He initially refused to be helpful, since the complaint had been anonymous, but these visits and another in February 2000 left him feeling happy about his conditions. A further visit by Mr Dring and Trading Standards in December 2000, followed a complaint from the RSPCA and yielded no criminal action, he said.

"Trading Standards policed the animal health," said Mr Waugh. "They can come in any time, any day they want."

The case continues.