ET ISSUE 2165
Sunday 29 April 2001
Army 'caused original foot and mouth
infection'
By Joe Murphy, Political Editor
THE army was last night accused of being the source of the foot and mouth
epidemic after it admitted supplying untreated waste food to the pig farm
where the disease broke out.
In an astonishing
development in the search
for the epidemic's origin,
The Telegraph has learnt
that slops - including
waste meat imported from
countries where the
disease is rife - were
supplied to the farmers at
the centre of the outbreak.
The food was taken from the kitchens of Whitburn Training Camp, near
Sunderland, and fed to pigs at Bobby and Ronnie Waugh's farm in
Heddon-on-the-Wall, Northumberland.
A spokesman for the Ministry of Agriculture said last night: "We cannot
comment on the investigation into the source of the outbreak, because it might
prejudice further actions that may have to be taken, including prosecutions."
The link to the Waughs' farm was admitted by Baroness Symons, the defence
minister, who came under pressure from the Liberal Democrat peer, Lady
Miller of Clithorne Domer. "For more than 25 years, an unwritten agreement
has existed between local Army commanders and the Waugh brothers to
dispose of a minimal amount of wet food waste on an occasional basis," she
said in a written answer to Lady Miller last week.
Bobby Waugh yesterday said that he last collected a lorryload of wet food
slops from Whitburn camp in December. The disease was identified at the
farm on February 22, but was thought by Maff vets to have been present
among the 600 pigs for several weeks. Mr Waugh, who is licensed by Maff
to process waste into swill, added: "I collected waste food from Whitburn
around 10 times a year." He claimed that it was processed into swill at a
neighbour's farm.
MPs demanded an immediate inquiry into the affair and accused Maff of
smearing the Chinese restaurant trade to cover up the link to the Army. At the
start of the foot and mouth crisis there had been a furious row when a Maff
official alleged that illegal meat used in Chinese restaurants was probably to
blame.
Some restaurants suffered a 40 per cent drop in trade as a result and
demonstrators marched on the ministry headquarters in London.
The Ministry of Defence faced calls to stop buying cheap meat for soldiers
from countries where foot and mouth is endemic. More than half of the meat
served to soldiers is imported, some from Brazil and Uruguay where the
serotype O strain of foot and mouth - the one that is ravaging Britain - is
endemic.
The admission that imported Army meat went to the farm at
Heddon-on-the-Wall is the first time that a potential path of infection has been
identified, although the MoD claimed yesterday that its imported meat came
from farms free of the disease. Last month, when Maff said that swill was
believed to be the source, it did not disclose the existence of the contract
between the Army and the Waugh brothers. Whitburn camp is a rifle range
used by the Territoral Army and the cadet force for four months a year.
Tim Yeo, the Tory agriculture spokesman, yesterday described the disclosure
of the Army supplies as "a very serious matter". He added: "I never believed
that the smear against the Chinese restaurants had any foundation and it now
appears to have been an attempt to divert attention away from the real culprit.
This must be investigated immediately and it cannot wait for the wider inquiry
that will be held after the epidemic has been defeated. We Conservatives
were arguing long before this outbreak that it was wrong for the Ministry of
Defence to be importing so much cheap meat from countries that do not meet
the same standards of farming as the UK."
Lady Miller, the Liberal Democrat agriculture spokesman, urged the Army to
stop importing meat from foot and mouth countries. "The slur on the Chinese
restaurant trade was utterly unfair. We need a stronger regime of quality
checks."
Yesterday, the MoD said it was "sure" that its imports were not the source of
foot and mouth. A spokesman said: "There is no reason to suspect any MoD
establishment. Some meat is imported from Brazil and Uruguay, but it is from
foot and mouth-free regions of those countries and conforms with British and
European regulations."
Fears that humans had become infected with the foot-and-mouth virus
diminished yesterday after a further five people were cleared by medical tests.
-- Anonymous, April 28, 2001
BBC Sunday, 29 April, 2001, 15:53 GMT 16:53 UK
Army 'not to blame' for
farm disease
Lorries transporting carcasses have been leaking
Agriculture Minister Nick Brown has said it
would be "completely wrong" to blame the
army for bringing foot-and-mouth disease into
Britain.
He dismissed suggestions that the disease
could have entered the country in meat
imported for soldiers.
The Ministry of Defence has confirmed that the
army supplied waste food to the
Northumberland pig farm at the centre of the
foot-and-mouth outbreak.
But an MOD spokesman said the kitchen
waste, from Whitburn training camp near
Sunderland, did not contain any imported meat
from countries where the disease was present.
Officials from the
Ministry of Agriculture
Fisheries and Food
(Maff) have previously
suggested that a
possible source of the
outbreak could have
been swill at the farm in
Heddon-on-the-Wall,
Northumberland, run by farmer Bobby Waugh.
Meanwhile, deliveries of animal carcasses to a
disposal site at Widdrington in Northumberland
have been suspended after protesters
prevented several lorries from entering the
area.
The lorries were later allowed through, but
further deliveries have been halted until a
meeting is held between protesters and Maff
officials on Monday evening.
On Saturday the road through Widdrington
village had to be decontaminated after one
lorry halted by protesters was found to be
leaking significant amounts of fluid.
'Different strain'
Foreign meat infected with foot-and-mouth
has been blamed for the onset of the
outbreak.
Baroness Miller, Liberal Democrat
spokeswoman, told the Sunday Times
newspaper that army waste might have
triggered the foot-and-mouth outbreak.:
"It's unfair that Chinese
restaurants should be
blamed when all along
waste foreign meat
used by the British
Army was also ending
up in the same swill,"
she said.
But speaking on BBC
One's On The Record
programme, Mr Brown
dismissed suggestions
that meat imported for
the armed forces could
be responsible for the epidemic.
"I don't think there is anything in that at all,"
he said.
"Apart from anything else the virus strain that
is present in regions of South America is a
different strain.
"But in any event the idea that somehow the
armed forces caused the disease I think is just
completely wrong."
Search for source
Mr Brown said the government was
investigating how the virus, and a strain of
swine fever in East Anglia, had entered the
country.
"There is work under way but there are legal
reasons why I can't put it into the public
domain now," he said.
The government still
believed the first case
of foot-and-mouth was
at the
Heddon-on-the-Wall
farm.
But he added: "There
are a number of
inquiries that are continuing and I mustn't
jeopardise anything that might come before
the courts."
A Maff spokesman said the leakage from the
lorries in Widdrington had been mostly
disinfectant fluid.
But he said protesters had not helped the
difficult disposal operation.
"Once livestock is slaughtered, the messy
process of decay begins.
"Clearly, this kind of cargo cannot be left
standing around without increasing the risks to
public health."
In County Durham, a burial operation due to
start on Monday at a site near Tow Law will
not get underway until Wednesday, after wet
weather delayed engineering work
-- Anonymous, April 29, 2001