May 25, 2001
MAFF is planning to bring 5000 livestock carcasses from the North Yorkshire foot-and-mouth outbreak for disposal at the Inkerman site at Tow Law.
On Thursday night 200 carcasses from Appleton Wisk arrived at the site, and by bringing a further 5000 to the site, MAFF are being criticised as rubbing salt into the wound. Durham County Council deputy leader, Bob Pendlebury said the council is engaged in a race against time ton stop the imported deliveries.
The council is urging MAFF to think again and seek an alternative to the highly sensitive site.
The move is likely to bring about a strong reaction from local residents, who have already protested strenuously against the burial site.
Up until now MAFF has avoided using the site for disposal from outbreaks outside of the region.
Yorkshire fears new
foot-and-mouth cluster
May 23, 2001
Extra vets have been brought in to the Yorkshire Dales National Park in a bid to contain a worrying cluster of foot-and-mouth disease.
Seventeen new cases have been reported near Settle in in the past two weeks despite the national trend of dwindling cases.
There are fears that the disease hotspot could escalate to a level similar to Cumbria which has been devasted by 705 outbreaks since the crisis began. Almost 1,000 farms in the Yorkshire beauty spot have been placed under restrictions and livestock movements have been cancelled.
The Ministry of Agriculture is reported to have authorised the slaughter of 16,000 cattle and sheep on Malham Moor in the Yorkshire Dales to help halt the spread of the disease. Troops are standing by to oversee a culling operation.
Six women arrested at the controversial Inkerman foot-and-mouth burial site in Tow Law, County Durham, appeared in court yesterday charged with failing to leave land as directed.
They were granted unconditional bail until June 26. The women were arrested during a protest against the burial of thousands of carcasses at the 240-acre site and are. They fear gases emitted from the site could harm villagers' health.
The total number of outbreaks in the UK has now reached 1,629, and more than three million animals slaughtered.
Health checks for pyre families
May 22, 2001
Worried families living close to the North-East's two mass burial sites for slaughtered livestock have been promised that their health will be closely monitored in the wake of the foot-and-mouth crisis.
People living in villages near the incineration site at Hemscott Hill near Ellington, Northumberland, and Inkerman, Tow Law, County Durham, have been told that screening will be carried out by public health officials to discover whether they have suffered harm.
The moves come amid continued fears that ash from pyres and the buried carcases of cows slaughtered during epidemic could be spreading the human form of BSE.
May 16, 2001
Protesters' hopes for the early closure of a controversial North-East foot-and-mouth burial site appeared to be dashed by Maff officials last night despite a weekend promise by Tony Blair to look into their concerns.
A delegation of residents from Widdrington, Northumberland, had a five-minute meeting with the Prime Minister on Sunday at which they called for the immediate closure of the village's burial site where 125,000 slaughtered animals have already been interred.
They are still waiting to see if their top-level lobbying has worked. But a Maff spokesman said last night they planned to close the site at the end of the month and the situation remained the same.
Selected footpaths in areas free of foot-and-mouth are to reopen. Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council announced yesterday that 20 urban paths and 11 routes through woodland and over fields would be back in business after a series of risk assessments and advice from the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Maff).
Brazil's government this week recommended killing 250 cattle infected with foot-and-mouth disease as well as cattle on neighboring properties. The contiguous cull could include hundreds of thousands of uninfected animals in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul.
May 14, 2001
Fourteen people were arrested in Tow Law, County Durham, at the weekend during a desperate attempt to halt operations at a foot-and-mouth burial site.
Protestors have kept a vigil outside the Inkerman depot since it opened but their ranks grew over the weekend after claims that the rotting carcasses may produce toxic gas. Of the 14 arrested, six were charged with offences ranging from aggravated trespass to police assault and were bailed to appear in court on May 22.
Villagers say the stench from the site, which is half a mile from the local primary school, had caused vomiting, headaches and sore throats. Maff is to install filters to stop gas escaping.
Protestors from Widdrington, Northumberland, who are also demanding the closure of a burial site for 120,000 carcasses, yesterday put their case to Prime Minister Tony Blair during a five minute meeting with him in Trimdon.
The foot-and-mouth crisis is again threatening a 400-strong deer herd at Raby Castle, near Staindrop, County Durham. The ancestral home of Lord Barnard is now almost completely surrounded by the disease. The deer have been fenced off and are a reasonable distance from Keverstone Grange, the site of the latest outbreak.
A new case of the disease was confirmed at a farm in Killerby near Darlington yesterday, one of four new cases confirmed across the country. There are now 1,591 confirmed cases of the disease nationwide.
Village wins battle over pit stench
May 14, 2001
Campaigners in Tow Law are claiming a partial victory after the Government bowed to pressure to seal off the Inkerman foot-and-mouth burial pit.
Villagers say the mass grave of more than 12,000 animal carcasses was the source of a stench that has made their lives a misery.
After bombarding the Ministry of Agriculture (Maff) with telephone complaints about the smell, villagers confronted officials at a meeting on Friday and told them that it was causing headaches and sore throats and making children vomit.
The ministry admitted yesterday that there had not been enough carcasses to fill the site as quickly as it had anticipated and the exposure of the dead cattle had created the smell.
Meanwhile The National Farmers' Union president Ben Gill has angered environmentalists by suggesting that eco-terrorists deliberately triggered the foot-and-mouth outbreak. His comments came in response to a question at an Australian farmers' conference in Canberra.
He said: 'There's no doubt foot-and-mouth spread to the UK illegally and, unfortunately, we cannot rule out eco-terrorism.'
But the Friends of the Earth group (FoE) condemned Mr Gill's comments, and suggested that farmers 'look closer to home before casting blame out'.
A new case of foot-and-mouth disease in County Durham and two in North Yorkshire made for half of the country's new outbreaks yesterday. The total now stands at 1,603.
May 9, 2001
Vets are regularly inspecting a prized herd of rare Beef Shorthorn cattle and deer at Raby Castle, Staindrop, County Durham, after foot-and-mouth was confirmed on a nearby farm.
A spokesman for Lord Barnard's estate described the latest outbreak as 'disastrous'.
So far the deer and cattle have remained unaffected but are being inspected every day. The Raby Estate stretches across Teesdale to the Cumbrian border.
The castle will be closed for the foreseeable future along with High Force waterfall in Upper Teesdale.
May3, 2001
Prime Minister Tony Blair is expected to formally announce today that the battle against foot-and-mouth is nearly over.
His first formal press conference on the crisis is expected to pave the way for a general election on June 7 and comes as the number of new daily cases of the disease continues to fall. There are currently 1,538 cases nationwide.
A new case was confirmed today at Winston near Darlington.
Fifteen people tested for foot-and-mouth have now been given the all-clear.
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Read more:
23-05-01
Yorkshire fears foot-and-mouth cluster
22-05-01
Health checks for pyre families
16-05-01
Protestors' hopes dashed
14-05-01 14-05-01
09-05-01
14 arrests in foot-and-mouth protest
Village wins battle over pit stench
Foot-and-mouth threat to Raby Estate
03-05-01
PM announcement on foot-and-mouth today
read on
Have your say
Do you have views on this subject? Click on the link to write to me and share them!
Write to Sue
read on
Copyright (c) 2000-2001 Sue Kelly. TASTES OF. . .