Vet sensed 'big trouble' at foot-and-mouth farm

The first veterinary surgeon sent to a pig farm suspected of having animals with foot-and-mouth disease at the beginning of last year's devastating outbreak sensed "big trouble" within minutes of arriving, a court heard.

Jim Dring, a Ministry of Agriculture vet who was sent to the farm run by Bobby Waugh and his brother Ronald, entered a first shed and saw lesions on a pig's trotter. "In my heart I knew at that moment we were in big trouble," he said yesterday.

Earlier, Judge James Prowse, who is trying Bobby Waugh on 16 animal health and husbandry charges, heard that the 56-year-old later tried to blame Mr Dring for the outbreak. "[The pigs were all right] until that bastard Jimmy Dring went in there last Thursday," he is alleged to have told another vet.

But South East Northumberland magistrates' court heard that Mr Dring, who was tracking foot-and-mouth through suppliers of the infected Cheale Meats abattoir in Essex, immediately saw scores of pigs were infected at Mr Waugh's Burnside tenant farm in Heddon-on-the-Wall, Northumberland.

Mr Waugh, of Pallion, Sunderland, denies all 16 charges. The trial continues.