Army prepares mass sheep grave

The mass burial presents a daunting logistics problem

The Army is preparing a mass grave in Cumbria for hundreds of thousands of sheep which have been slaughtered in an attempt to wipe out foot-and-mouth disease.

Army officers are overseeing the excavation of trenches on a large tract of land next to a disused military airfield at Great Orton, near Wigton, to prepare for the delivery of sheep carcasses.

The grave, designed to speed up the slaughter of infected animals, comes as the government considers a ban on pigswill, which is being blamed for causing the outbreak.

Trench specifics

Each trench 5m wide, 4m deep and 100m long

Trenches able to hold 40,000 carcasses

The drastic measure is being enforced as the number of confirmed cases of foot-and-mouth in the UK has risen by 47 to 607.

Major Guy Richardson, of the Royal Scots Regiment, told BBC News 24 that he expected sealed containers filled with animal carcasses to start arriving at the Great Orton site on Sunday night and to be opened on Monday morning.

In tandem with the mass grave, ministers are considering new proposals to clamp down on sheep movements - seen as contributing to the rapid spread - once the current animal movement ban is lifted.

Brigadier Alex Birtwistle, Commander of the Army's 42 North West Brigade, said the first aim was to clear the backlog of dead sheep.

He told the BBC the measures were designed to stop the disease "raging almost out of control", and warned that the consequences for the immediate area would be "terrible" if they failed.

Officials say the time between disease identification and slaughter had been dramatically cut, but the targets had not yet been achieved in the disease 'hotspot' of Cumbria.

Aerial pictures show row upon row of dead cows and sheep

But some residents near the site at Great Orton were said to be angry they had not been informed about the scale or nature of the latest measures.

Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Fisheries (Maff) officials have expressed concern about three of the new cases which are well away from existing infected farms.

One is at Broughton-in-Furness in the Lake District, another at Castle Douglas in Dumfries and Galloway and a third at Northwich in Cheshire.

Farmers are worried about the outbreak in the Lake District because of its proximity to the fells and the busy tourist area of Coniston Water.

Pigswill fears

The current epidemic has been traced to a farm in Northumberland where animals were fed pigswill, but Maff says there is not yet evidence to suggest pigswill is the root cause.

The mass grave is in Cumbria, a disease 'hotspot'

The feed, made up from the leftovers from school lunches, restaurants and cafes, is already banned in Luxembourg and Portugal but is fed to about 80,000 pigs in the UK.

Such a ban was suggested by agricultural experts three years ago, but was not taken up by the government.

The UK only bans the use of uneaten airline dinners in swill, because of the risk that food sourced from abroad could carry disease with it.

Suppliers of the feed have to be licenced and must guarantee to heat-treat it to eradicate infection.

Following the present epidemic and last year's swine fever outbreak in East Anglia, these precautions are no longer considered adequate.

The crisis is affecting all aspects of rural life

Peter Jinman, of the British Veterinary Association, backed a ban, saying the use of pigswill "seems a risk too far".

Sheep scams

The government is also set to block the rapid movement of sheep around the UK by introducing a ban on sales within 21 days of purchase, which already applies to pigs and cows.

The proposals have the support of the National Farmers' Union.

Some of the movements are thought to have been carried out as part of scams to maximise EU subsidy claims.

It is thought that some farmers hire in sheep to boost livestocks artificially when eligibility for grants is checked, but the NFU says there is no evidence to substantiate such claims.

A fifth outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease has been confirmed in the Netherlands, and two cases have been confirmed in France.