20/04 (20:17) FACE FACTS ON CARCASS MOUNTAIN, SAY FARMERS
By Julie Wheldon, PA News
Farmers leaders in the South West tonight called on the Environment Agency to "face
facts" as the foot-and-mouth carcass mountain in Devon neared 200,000.
The South West National Farmers' Union said the Environment Agency needs to be far more
flexible in allowing on-farm burials, as the number of slaughtered animals awaiting
disposal was growing every day.
The union said it had received countless calls from grief-stricken and angry farmers who,
having endured the slaughter of their healthy animals, are now having to watch bodies
decompose a few feet from their homes.
Anthony Gibson, regional director of the NFU, called on the environment Agency to face
facts.
He said: "The stench is so bad in some parts of Devon that they are becoming
virtually uninhabitable."
"The situation is medieval in its awfulness and is totally intolerable."
He said the Environment Agency told the Prime Minister it would give decisions on on-farm
burial sites within three hours.
But Mr Gibson said: "It appears that the decision is always virtually `no'."
He went on: "At the end of the day, which is the lesser evil?
"Banning on-farm burials may prevent some small or theoretical risk of pollution, but
leaving huge numbers of carcasses to putrefy where they fall must surely represent a far
higher risk to the environment and health, not the mention the emotional trauma it is
causing.
"The Government has got to treat this as an emergency and do whatever it takes to rid
Devon of this hideous heap of death."
Ben Woodhouse, spokesman for the Environment Agency, said: "We do appreciate the
situation and we realise it is very distressing for people, but we also have a duty to
protect the environment.
"We are doing our utmost to make sure we deal with this as quickly as possible but
there are very few places in Devon where burial is available.
"We have to make sure there is no legacy of pollution of farms, rivers and water
supplies as the bodies compose.
"We are not wilfully trying to obstruct things but we have to make sure once
foot-and-mouth is over we don't face further pollution from carcasses as they break
down."